Preamble

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[MR. SPEAKER in the Chair]

NEW WRIT

For Derby, North, in the room of Group Captain Clifford Arthur Bowman Wilcock, O.B.E., A.F.C., deceased.—[Mr. H. Bowden.]

Oral Answers to Questions — ROYAL AIR FORCE

Chalgrove Airfield

Mr. John Hall: asked the Secretary of State for Air if the agreement with Martin Baker Aircraft, Ltd., in respect of Chalgrove Airfield, has yet been signed.

The Secretary of State for Air (Mr. Julian Amery): No, Sir.

Mr. Hall: Is my right hon. Friend aware that I raised the matter two years ago, on 31st March, 1960, and that on 8th December, 1960, I was informed by the Under-Secretary of State that only one or two matters of small detail remained to be settled? May I know what those points of detail are? Furthermore, does the original assurance still stand, that the land will be offered back to the original owners as agricultural land at current market price when the company ceases to have use for it for its present purpose?

Mr. Amery: A public local inquiry was held by the War Works Commission in February of this year. The firm, not unnaturally, wants to await the result of the inquiry before it signs the agreement and before everything is finally settled.
With regard to my hon. Friend's second point, I understand that the firm has made it clear that it would give a first option to the original owners—I

think that is the position—if it terminated its lease.

Mr. Hall: Might I press my right hon. Friend to be a little clearer about this? Will he reassure me and the House that when the company ceases to wish to use the airfield for the purpose of testing ejector seats it will then offer the land back to the original owners as agricultural land at current prices in accordance with the undertaking originally given?

Mr. Amery: That is the situation as I understand it.

Airmen's Wives, North Luffenham (Hospital Facilities)

Mr. Lipton: asked the Secretary of State for Air what hospital facilities are available to the wives of airmen at North Luffenham in cases of confinement.

Mr. Amery: Service wives at North Luffenham may use either the National Health Service maternity facilities or those provided by the Royal Air Force Hospital at Nocton Hall.

Mr. Lipton: Can the right hon. Gentleman be satisfied with the present arrangements when some of the wives who are already in labour have to be sent by road to hospital 50 miles away with no qualified person in attendance to deal with any emergency en route? Does he not think this a disgraceful and scandalous state of affairs? Will he bring this sort of thing to an end without further delay?

Mr. Amery: I do not think that the situation is a scandalous one. We should, of course, like to have even better facilities than we have, but what we have compares very reasonably with the civilian facilities available in the area.

Mr. K. Lewis: As North Luffenham is in my constituency, might I make it clear to my right hon. Friend that we have all the health facilities in Rutland available for anyone from North Luffenham who cares to make use of them? This is contrary to the view that some people seem to have about my county.

Mr. Mulley: We should like a little more information. Is it not the case that some wives of Service personnel


have to go fifty miles for their confinement? If that is the case, ought not something to be done about it?

Mr. Amery: There are facilities at North Luffenham, but they are not on a large scale, and some wives of airmen prefer to go to Nocton Hall for their confinement, and this is some distance off. They have a choice.

Mr. Lipton: In view of the very unsatisfactory nature of the reply, I give notice that I shall raise the matter on the Adjournment.

Newspaper Representative (Facilities)

Mr. Rankin: asked the Secretary of State for Air what facilities were afforded by his department to Mr. Chapman Pincher, of the Daily Express newspaper, to investigate the effectiveness of Great Britain's hydrogen bombs.

Mr. Amery: Mr. Chapman Pincher was given facilities to visit Headquarters Bomber Command and a Bomber Command station.

Mr. Rankin: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that in its issue of 19th March the Daily Express made clear that the Air Ministry had offered unique facilities to Mr. Chapman Pincher to see everything at one of our chief bomber stations and that no vital facts were withheld from him? Is the right hon. Gentleman able to square that with the statement which he made a week earlier in the Air Estimates debate, on 12th March:
I am not prepared to explain here the exact details of our readiness or dispersal systems."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 12th March, 1962; Vol. 655. c. 909.]
When he could not explain them to Parliament, how was it that Mr. Pincher was able to go and see all about them?

Mr. Amery: I thought Mr. Pincher wrote some very well-informed articles, but I am not, of course, responsible for everything that he wrote.

Mr. Emrys Hughes: Will the right hon. Gentleman assure us that Members of Parliament who want to write articles on this subject will be given facilities equal to those given to Mr. Chapman Pincher?

Mr. Amery: Similar facilities have been given in the past to hon. Members belonging to the party opposite.

Mr. Mulley: While welcoming the maximum information that can be given to the public, may I ask why these facilities were granted immediately after the Air Estimates debate when the Secretary of State had declined to give the House information about scrambling and so on which subsequently appeared in Mr. Chapman Pincher's articles? Will the right hon. Gentleman say whether he approved the articles as well as providing the facilities, and will he give like facilities to any accredited defence correspondent who wishes to avail himself of the opportunity?

Mr. Amery: As I have already said, I thought Mr. Pincher's articles were very well informed and well written, but I do not accept responsibility for everything that he wrote. As I have already said, I have previously provided facilities for other journalists, including hon. Members opposite, to make visits of a similar kind.

Aircraft, Transport Command

Mr. Mulley: asked the Secretary of State for Air if he will give the types and numbers of aircraft on order for Transport Command and the dates on which he expects to have them available for service.

Mr. Amery: I would refer the hon. Member to the information in the Air Estimates Memorandum and to the speech of my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State in the debate on 12th March.

Mr. Mulley: With respect, that information is not nearly as full as the information about V-Bomber Command which Mr. Pincher had made available to him. Cannot we have the dates when the Air Force expects to get into service some of these transport aircraft which are on order? Can the right hon. Gentleman tell us something about the Belfasts and when they will be in service—all ten of them—because there is great concern about this lack of a strategic air freighter and we want to know what the right hon. Gentleman is doing about it.

Mr. Amery: I understand, appreciate and share the hon. Gentleman's concern about the heavy freighters and the need to have them in service as soon as possible, but I think it would be unwise to go beyond what I have said previously; that we expect to have ten Belfasts in the mid-1960s.

Children (Education Allowances)

Mr. Mulley: asked the Secretary of State for Air what allowances and arrangements are available for Royal Air Force officers and other ranks to assist them to educate their children in this country whilst on overseas tours, and to avoid the problems arising from frequent changes of school.

Mr. Amery: Allowances are paid for children at boarding or at day schools, at the rates set out on page 17 of the Air Estimates. In addition, children are given one free passage every year to visit parents serving abroad.

Mr. Mulley: I am sure that the Secretary of State realises that the education of children is a very important welfare and recruiting factor. Can he say how the Service allowances compare with similar allowances for personnel in the Foreign and Colonial Services? Are any steps taken not only to advise Service men about public and private school possibilities but also to bring to their attention the possibility of local education authority schools, some of which are boarding schools? My impression is that an airman is left very much to his own devices and that if he is in Singapore or Hong Kong and has no relatives in this country he finds the placing of his children in school a difficult matter. What help is the Air Ministry giving?

Mr. Amery: The Royal Air Force education branch can and does help, but we have found that, on the whole, parents have strong and decided views of their own about the education of their children. With regard to comparable rates paid by the Foreign Office, our rates are at present lower than theirs but I am, with my right hon. Friends the First Lord of the Admiralty and the Secretary of State for War, discussing with the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether there should be any change.

Mr. Wainwright: I understood the Minister to indicate that children who are attending school will be given the fare to visit their parents abroad once a year. Does that concession include children who are not attending school? If so, does it include the children of officers under 25?

Mr. Amery: That is a different question, and I will write to the hon. Gentleman about it.

Miss Harvie Anderson: Is my right hon. Friend aware that there are hon. Members on both sides of the House who are very anxious about the limited educational standards reached by some of these children? Will he undertake to consult the Minister of Education with a view to improving the facilities which are available when the children do not come back to this country for schooling?

Mr. Amery: I will gladly consult my right hon. Friend who will, naturally, be glad to receive any representations from my hon. Friend.

Mr. Mulley: We wish the right hon. Gentleman well in his discussions with the Chancellor of the Exchequer on this matter. Will he make a statement to the House as soon as he is in a position to do so?

Mr. Amery: I have no doubt that a statement will be made, although it may be made by the Minister of Defence rather than by myself.

Oral Answers to Questions — SCOTLAND

School Building

Mr. W. Hamilton: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland what steps have been taken in the past six months to encourage local education authorities to combine in school building consortia; and with what results.

The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. John Maclay): Arrangements are in hand for meetings in Edinburgh and Inverness, with the Minister of State in the chair, to which representatives of all education authorities will be invited and in which the advantages of consortium methods will be explained and discussed.

Mr. Hamilton: Does that Answer mean that nothing has been done in the last six or twelve months to explain in greater detail to the local education authorities the quite considerable economies that can arise from the establishment of such consortia? Is not Lanarkshire, as a member of the English consortium, the only authority in Scotland at the moment which is in a consortium? Since many of the steel components are made in Scotland, may we not call on the Secretary of State to make tremendous efforts to bring more education authorities in Scotland into this kind of arrangement?

Mr. Maclay: I agree that these consortia are of great importance. We are moving as fast as we can to get more authorities involved and interested.

Forth Road Bridge (Tolls)

Mr. Gourlay: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland when he expects to receive the draft schedule of toll charges from the Forth Road Bridge Joint Board; and when he proposes to invite objections to the suggested charges.

Mr. Maclay: I would refer the hon. Member to the reply I gave on 14th March to the right hon. Member for East Stirlingshire (Mr. Woodburn).

Mr. Gourlay: I recall the reply the Secretary of State gave to my right hon. Friend, but is the right hon. Gentleman aware that since the Forth Road Bridge Joint Board accepted the principle of toll charges considerable economic changes have been taking place in Fife resulting from pit closures? Does the right hon. Gentleman expect that Fife will be able to attract the necessary industry if toll charges unduly increase the freight charges of those industries? Will he, therefore, assure the House that if toll charges must be imposed they will be of a nominal character?

Mr. Maclay: I am awaiting the schedule that is to be submitted to me. There will be opportunity for a public inquiry if there are objections to the proposed toll charges.

Mr. W. Hamilton: Why is a toll imposed on this particular part of a trunk road while the M.1, which is also a trunk road, has no toll charges?

Mr. Maclay: The hon. Gentleman will be aware, from previous answers that have been given, of the Government's policy in relation to toll charges. This policy has been set out by myself and by the Minister of Transport.

Commonwealth Immigrants

Sir C. Osborne: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland if he is aware that 10,800 Commonwealth immigrants arrived in January, 1962, against 2,940 in 1961 and only 120 in 1960, which, on the 1961 total figure of 136,000, indicates a total of over 400,000 for 1962; and if he will take the necessary steps to see that Scotland's proportion of 400,000 are property housed and found jobs.

Mr. Maclay: I have nothing to add to the answer which I gave to my hon. Friend on 7th March.

Sir C. Osborne: Why does my right hon. Friend mot want Scotland to have its fair share of the immigrants who are coming to this country? Will he direct 20,000 of them to Dundee, the Socialist hon. Member for which is so keen on unlimited numbers coming here?

Mr. Maclay: My hon. Friend must be aware from previous answers that we do not consider that any special Scottish measures as regards jobs or houses are necessary.

Sir C. Osborne: In view of the enormous difficulties in Scotland in regard to jobs and houses, does my right hon. Friend think that Scotland could take a fair share of the numbers who are coming in?

Mr. Maclay: We have never been restrictive in our view in Scotland about people coming from any part of the world.

Mr. Hoy: Is the Secretary of State aware that jobs and houses are essential in Scotland and that when we have them we would certainly resent any measures being taken to prevent people coming in merely because of the colour of their skin?

Certificate of Education (Spoken English)

Mr. Hector Hughes: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland whether he will introduce an examination in


spoken English in the leaving certificate in Scotland.

Mr. Maclay: I am certainly anxious to secure a high standard of spoken English in the schools, but I do not think it would be practicable to try to test this in the examination for the Scottish Certificate of Education.

Mr. Hughes: Will the right hon. Gentleman pay due respect to what are sometimes contemptuously called dialects, Whether they be spoken in Scotland, Ireland, the West Country or elsewhere, and ensure that they are properly dealt with?

Mr. Maclay: Speaking personally, I should greatly regret the disappearance of dialects such as those to which the hon. and learned Gentleman has referred.

Marginal Land (Financial Assistance)

Mr. N. McLean: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland whether he has completed his discussion with Scottish farmers about the continuation of financial assistance for marginal land; and whether he will make a statement about the future of marginal agricultural production.

Mr. Maclay: As stated in the recent White Paper on the Annual Review, 1962, there will be further discussions with the farmers' unions on the proposals for the winter keep scheme. The marginal agricultural production scheme, as already announced, will terminate with the 1962 cropping season.

Mr. McLean: Will my right hon. Friend bear in mind the importance of bringing these discussions to a conclusion before the marginal agricultural production scheme ends so that the new schemes can follow on in the immediate cropping season? Will he also bear in mind that it is very important that these schemes should replace completely and adequately the good work done under the marginal agricultural production scheme in the Highlands over the last ten or more years?

Mr. Maclay: I am well aware of both points which my hon. Friend has raised. I think that these new proposals, together with the existing production

grants, will provide a system of grants very well suited to our marginal areas.

Mr. Emrys Hughes: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that there is very strong criticism of the mean and niggardly action of the Government concerning aid in respect of marginal land? Does he realise that most farming people in Scotland believe that this was a very good way to develop the land of Scotland? He has done a gross disservice to Scotland by the attitude which he has adopted.

Mr. Maclay: The hon. Gentleman seems to be about three years out of date.

Sir J. Duncan: Will my right hon. Friend give an assurance that the proposed legislation will be introduced in the present Session so that there will be no gap between the ending of the marginal agricultural production scheme and the introduction of the new schemes?

Mr. Maclay: I am afraid that I cannot give any positive assurances about the dates of legislation, but I am well aware of the need to ensure that there is no gap.

Unfit Houses

Mr. Millan: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland how many unfit houses he expects to be closed or demolished in 1962.

Mr. Maclay: Not all local authorities have yet sent me their slum clearance programmes for the three years 1962 to 1964, but it is already clear that they are planning to deal with more than 12,000 unfit houses a year during that period.

Mr. Millan: Is the Secretary of State satisfied that that is a serious estimate? Is it not a fact that between 1956 and 1961 there was no improvement in the number of houses dealt with in Scotland? Since the Government have said that the emphasis in their housing policy is on slum clearance and redevelopment, when may we expect an improvement in these figures? What are the Government doing about them? This is a very serious matter.

Mr. Maclay: I should not like to accept everything that the hon. Gentleman has said without checking the figures, which I do not have in my head. However, I believe that the figures which I have given are a fair estimate of what we are hoping to achieve. It is difficult to be absolutely precise as to what will be achieved at this stage.

Civil Defence (Dispersal of Population)

Mr. Emrys Hughes: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland what are his latest proposals for the dispersal of the civil population in the event of nuclear war.

Mr. Maclay: I am about to write to local authorities giving outline arrangements for a dispersal scheme and I will send the hon. Member a copy of the letter.

Mr. Hughes: Will the Secretary of State take care to ensure that in future he does not make arrangements for the population of Glasgow to be sent to the neighbourhood of Holy Loch? Can he give us any idea as to where nearly three million of the industrial population can be dispersed in Scotland when there are no houses for them?

Mr. Maclay: I said that I am sending the hon. Gentleman a copy of the letter. I hope that this time I will get the information right up to date.

Houses, Faifley (Repairs)

Mr. Bence: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland what representations he has received respecting the repairs necessary to Scottish Special Housing Association houses in Faifley, Clydebank; and what measures he is taking to inquire into the cause of defects occurring soon after the houses were built.

Mr. Maclay: The Town Council of Clydebank wrote to me on 15th March expressing its concern and the following day senior officers of my Department and of the Scottish special Housing Association discussed the matter with representatives of the Council.
As I explained to the hon. Member when I wrote to him last week, I expect to receive from the Association soon a full technical report on the causes of the defects in these houses.

Mr. Bence: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that there is grave concern not only in Clydebank but in other areas about the serious defects in these houses? Thousands of pounds have to be spent on houses which have been ill designed and badly constructed. Notwithstanding some assertions made by the right hon. Gentleman and his Department, will he ensure that in future public money is used to build houses with some "guts" in them?

Mr. Maclay: The hon. Gentleman must let me await the Report before expecting me to agree with the criticisms which he has expressed. However, I very much regret that these difficulties have arisen.

Mr. Bence: These defects have been known for months. Thousands of pounds are having to be spent, the houses are in ruins—

Mr. Speaker: That may be true, but this is not the time to make speeches.

Mr. Bence: This is a bad case. In view of the unsatisfactory nature of the reply, I beg to give notice that I propose to raise the matter on the Adjournment.

Universities

Mr. Rankin: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland what reply he has made to the memorandum he received from the editor of the Glasgow Herald on the need for a fifth university for Scotland.

Mr. Maclay: This memorandum was addressed to the Committee on Higher Education, of which Lord Robbins is Chairman, and I cannot make any comment upon it.

Mr. Rankin: Is the Secretary of State aware that the memorandum rejected the idea of a satellite university, doubted the practicality of the expansion of Glasgow and Edinburgh Universities and, therefore, claimed that Scotland needed a fifth university so that it might have its fair share of the increasing financial and human resources which will be devoted to higher education in the years ahead? Will the right hon. Gentleman give us his views on those three points as Secretary of State for Scotland?

Mr. Maclay: Certain of the matters are outwith my direct responsibility, but


I have a general interest in the matter as a whole. For a general answer to the points which the hon. Gentleman has raised, I would refer him to the Answer given by my hon. Friend the Economic Secretary to the Treasury to the hon. Member for Glasgow, Maryhill (Mr. Hannan) on 8th March.

Miss Herbison: That Answer was most unsatisfactory. Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that he is responsible for educational facilities in Scotland? Is he also aware that there is a grave shortage of university places in Scotland and that this shortage will become much graver in the years ahead? Surely the time is ripe for an announcement on a fifth university for Scotland.

Mr. Maclay: The hon. Lady knows that I am well aware of the feelings on this matter in Scotland and that I am following very closely what is going on. However, she will realise that it is not competent for me to make any statement about the future of another university in Scotland.

Young Persons (Remand Centres)

Mr. Archie Manuel: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland how many young persons were committed to prison before trial during 1961 because of the lack of remand home or remand centre accommodation.

Mr. Maclay: Figures are not available for the whole of 1961, but for the six months from 1st September last 1,042 persons between 17 and 21 years were committed to prison before trial who could have been committed to remand centres had they been available.

Mr. Manuel: That is a most serious statement. Can the Secretary of State indicate by what right and under what Statute these young people are detained in Barlinnie Prison and other prisons on remand before trial? Will he take action to ensure that this practice stops and that the stigma attaching to these young people, who may be declared innocent when they come to trial, is completely removed?

Mr. Maclay: I agree with the hon. Gentleman that it is very desirable that proper accommodation should be available. A remand centre at Polmont, en-

tirely separate from the borstal institution, will be opened probably at the beginning of August. We are proposing to erect a fully equipped remand centre at Larbert, but it will be a little time before it is built.

Mr. Hoy: This is a very serious matter, as my hon. Friend has said. Cannot the Secretary of State speed up work on these remand centres, because it is intolerable that young people should be sent to prison even before their trial?

Mr. Maclay: I am very anxious that this work should go forward as quickly as possible.

Flood Prevention Schemes

Mr. Archie Manuel: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland how many applications he has received from local authorities for approval of flood prevention schemes under the Flood Prevention (Scotland) Act, 1961.

Mr. Maclay: One authority has formally submitted a scheme for approval and six others are known to be actively considering schemes.

Mr. Manuel: May I take it from what the Secretary of State has said that one scheme has been approved, or has one been submitted to him for approval? Does the fact that assistance to the value of, I think, only £20,000 is available under the Act have anything to do with the schemes not coming forward?

Mr. Maclay: No, I do not think so. My Answer was that one authority has formally submitted a scheme for approval. I cannot add to that at the moment.

Mr. Woodburn: In view of the problems concerning water supply, flooding and drainage, would not the right hon. Gentleman agree that the time has long since passed for a complete survey and control of the Whole watershed in Scotland?

Mr. Maclay: I appreciate the gravity of these matters, but we have debated them very often in relation to Bills on drainage and flooding which have become Acts of Parliament. However, I will have regard to what the right hon. Gentleman has said.

Agriculture (Winter Keep Scheme)

Mr. Wolrige-Gordon: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland which parts of Scotland will be in a position to receive grants for the production of winter keep in connection with the scheduled scheme under the recent Agricultural Price Review.

Mr. Maclay: It is proposed that the winter keep scheme will apply to livestock rearing land in all parts of Scotland.

Mr. Wolrige-Gordon: Will all farms, whether at present they benefit from M.A.P. grants or not, be in a position to submit requests for grant under this scheme when it comes into operation?

Mr. Maclay: I should not like to go into details of that kind in answer to a supplementary question. I should, however, make clear that details of the scheme have still to be worked out and the National Farmers' Unions consulted.

Mr. John Macleod: Does my right hon. Friend realise the importance of the scheme to these areas and that it as essential that people should know exactly what will happen before the M.A.P. scheme ends?

Mr. Maclay: I am well aware of the importance of these schemes to these areas.

Electricity Boards (Finance)

Mr. Millan: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will now make a statement regarding his discussions with the electricity boards in Scotland on the implementation of the policies set out in Command Paper 1337, The Financial and Economic Obligations of the Nationalised Industries.

Mr. Maclay: The South of Scotland Electricity Board has agreed that it should be its financial objective over the five years 1962–66 to secure an average gross return before deducting interest or making provision for depreciation of about 12½ per cent. on its net assets. This will enable the Board to finance from revenue more than 50 par cent, of its capital development.
Discussions with the North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board are still in progress.

Mr. Millan: While one cannot fully appreciate these figures without looking into them, may I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether it is a fact that this additional raising of capital means, in effect, price increases? Will the Secretary of State answer the simple question: how much will this cost electricity consumers in Scotland? They are already worried and annoyed about the South of Scotland increased electricity charges.

Mr. Maclay: I understand that the South of Scotland Board, which recently announced its new tariffs to produce an additional 11 per cent. of revenue, had all these matters in mind when making these increases.

Mr. Steele: Does any consultation take place with the Secretary of State regarding these new tariffs? Is it true that the weight is being put upon the domestic tariff as against the industrial tariff?

Mr. Maclay: The fixing of tariffs is a matter for the Board, but details of discussions which were held were set out in the White Paper dealing with the nationalised industries.

Mr. Millan: How can the right hon. Gentleman say that these increases are a matter for the Board? Can he answer the simple question: how much is this costing electricity consumers? It must be costing them something. Are we not entitled to know how much?

Mr. Maclay: I cannot answer that in reply to a supplementary question. If, however, the hon. Member would put a Question down, I would try to give him the answer. It would be a fairly complicated matter.

Municipal Elections

Mr. Hannan: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland if, in view of the forthcoming municipal elections, he will circularise returning officers drawing their attention to the regulations made under the Representation of the People Act; and if he will stress the impropriety of unauthorised persons being present


in premises where polling or counting of votes is proceeding.

Mr. Maclay: No, Sir. Returning officers are well aware of the local elections rules scheduled to the 1949 Act under which unauthorised persons must be excluded from the polling station and from the counting of votes.

Mr. Hannan: Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that in view of the recent local election in which abuses certainly took place, it would be very desirable to issue a circular reminding returning officers of such abuses as, for example, the local provost standing in the hall although not himself a candidate and welcoming the electors, with a count taking place under the same roof as the committee rooms of one of the political parties? Surely, something should be done to remind returning officers of the proper practice.

Mr. Maclay: There is a technical point which I should explain. The conduct of elections is entirely in the hands of the returning officers, as provided by the terms of the Representation of the People Act, 1949. It would be both unnecessary and improper for me to issue reminders to them about certain aspects of their duty, but doubtless the hon. Member's Question will come to their attention.

Students (Grants)

Dr. Dickson Mabon: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland when he expects to receive the Report on student grants from the Standing Advisory Committee; and if he will publish this Report.

Mr. Maclay: The Report has recently been received by my right hon. Friends the Minister of Education and the Minister for Science and myself. We are considering the Report but no decision has yet been made about publication.

Dr. Mabon: With the new dispensation in student grants, does not the Secretary of State consider it important to engender as much confidence in these committees as possible and that publication of the Report would help considerably, irrespective of what the Government's final decision might be?

Mr. Maclay: I appreciate the point that the hon. Member is making, but the

Advisory Committee is a new body and it has not yet been worked out how its advice can best be handled. It might well be contrary to the most useful working of the Committee to make a general rule at the beginning either that all its reports should be published or that none should.

Technical Colleges (Building Programme)

Dr. Dickson Mabon: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland whether the completion dates of the present technical colleges building programme will be realised; and if he will provide a table in the OFFICIAL REPORT showing the progress of each project.

Mr. Maclay: Of the Government's programme of technical college building to the value of £18 million to be started by the end of March 1964, project have beeb strated to date to the value of £13½ million. This includes projects to the value of £1 million already completed and others to the value of approximately £1½ million are expected to be completed by the end of the present year. I am circulating in the OFFICIAL REPORT tables showing estimated dates for the start and the completion of further projects which are at earlier stages.

Dr. Mabon: While it is difficult to accept all the implications of that Answer without seeing the full statement, may I ask whether the Secretary of State is, like the rest of us, rather disappointed at the progress which has been achieved under the earlier programme announced in 1956? Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that many communities, such as my own, have an interest in the present programmes and wish that they could be carried out with dispatch?

Mr. Maclay: I have been disappointed with the delays encountered concerning certain colleges, but the hon. Member will appreciate that the figure I have given for starts is not too bad. One of the major difficulties, which has arisen in the hon. Member's constituency among others, is the problem of sites.

Mr. Albu: Is the Secretary of State aware that a firm in my constituency which has a good apprenticeship record has been directed by the President of the


Board of Trade to conduct its expansion in a development district and that it wishes to choose Dunbarton but finds that no facilities are available for technical education?

—
Actual
Estimated


Starting Date
Completion Date
Starting Date
Completion Date


NEW COLLEGES






Stow Colleges of Building and Printing, Glasgow.
May, 1959
—
—
November, 1964


Robert Gordon's College, Aberdeen (New School of Domestic Science).
November,1960
—
—
August. 1963


Aberdeen Technical College
February, 1961
—
—
January. 1964


Kilmarnock Technical College
February, 1961
—
—
May, 1964


Ayr Technical College
February, 1961
—
—
June, 1964


Barmulloch College, Glasgow
March, 1961
—
—
December, 1964


Dundee Trades College
June, 1961
—
—
Summer, 1963


Langside College, Glasgow
August, 1961
—
—
August, 1964


Anniesland College, Glasgow
February, 1962
—
—
January, 1965


Clydebank Technical College
—
—
May, 1962
December,1964


Napier Technical College, Edinburgh
January, 1962
—
—
Autumn, 1964


Bathgate Technical College
—
—
March, 1962
November, 1963


Galashiels Technical Centre
—
—
May, 1962
September, 1963


Esk Valley College, Midlothian
—
—
September, 1962
July, 1965


Glasgow Nautical School
—
—
November, 1963
August, 1966


Greenock Technical College
—
—
Not yet available


Dundee Commercial College
—
—
January, 1964
September, 1965


MAJOR EXTENSIONS






Reid Kerr College, Paisley
May, 1960
—
—
August, 1962


Glasgow School of Art
December, 1960
—
—
September, 1962


*Kirkcaldy Technical College
September, 1960
—
—
June, 1966


Heriot Watt College, Edinburgh (New Department of Brewing and 1963 Applied Chemistry).
August, 1960
—
—
February,


Thursc Technical College
—
—
May, 1962
November, 1963


Stow College of Engineering, Glasgow.
—
—
August, 1962
August, 1964


David Dale College, Glasgow
—
—
August, 1962
August, 1964


Buckhaven Technical College
—
—
†October, 1962
March, 1963


 July, 1963
 July, 1965


*Three phase totalling £1,045,100: two years each phase.



† Temporary Scheme.

Agriculture (Price Review)

Mr. Emrys Hughes: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland what communication he has received from the National Farmers' Union of Scotland

Mr. Maclay: I should be grateful if the hon. Member would either write to me about this or let me have time to examine what he has said.

Following are the tables:

about the 1962 Price Review as it affects Scotland; and what was the nature of his reply.

Mr. Maclay: I have not received any communication from the Scottish National Farmers' Union on this subject.

Mr. Hughes: Is the Minister aware of the deep resentment in Scotland about agricultural subsidies? Is he aware that the dairy farmers in Ayrshire especially regard this as a severe blow to the dairying industry, because it will increase the price to the consumer without helping the farmer? Is he also aware that it is a heavy blow against the small egg producers and that the farmers of Scotland unanimously wish to see him in another place?

Mr. Maclay: The hon. Member has gone wide of his original Question. As he knows, I had a meeting last week with the Scottish N.F.U. The Union made it clear that it was unable to accept the Government's conclusions, but I gained the impression that it was well aware of the reasons for the result of the Review.

Sir J. Duncan: Was my right hon. Friend satisfied with the reception he got last week at the dinner of the Scottish N.F.U. and particularly with that part of the discussion which related to winter keep, to which the Scottish farmers are looking forward with keen interest?

Mr. Maclay: Even though the representatives of the Scottish N.F.U. did not like the Review, they were extremely kind to me when I met them on that occasion.

Mr. Hughes: In view of the totally unsatisfactory nature of the reply, I give notice that I will raise the matter on the Adjournment.

Ambulances (Maternity Patients)

Mrs. Hart: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland what arrangements are made by regional hospital boards to ensure that no maternity patient is taken to hospital by an unaccompanied ambulance driver.

Mr. Maclay: The normal practice is that, where a patient has to travel to a hospital by ambulance and the doctor thinks it necessary for her to be accompanied by a midwife, he arranges for either the district midwife or a midwife from the hospital to go with her.

Mrs. Hart: Is it not the case that all maternity patients going to hospital should be accompanied? Have there not been examples of patients with a

fair degree of urgency being unaccompanied? Will the Secretary of State make full inquiries and press upon the regional board the need for a midwife to accompany the driver?

Mr. Maclay: This is a matter which is best left to the discretion of the people immediately concerned. It would be wasteful of badly needed skilled staff to send somebody on every occasion if it was quite unnecessary to do so.

Mrs. Hart: Is the Secretary of State aware that, time after time, regional hospital boards apparently do not take the proper precautions to ensure that ambulance drivers are accompanied? In these circumstances, is it not his duty to intervene?

Mr. Maclay: If I were persuaded that some authorities were not fulfilling their duty properly, certainly I would take steps to bring the matter to their attention. Perhaps the hon. Lady will send me details if she has any cases in mind.

Mr. Hoy: In view of the number of complaints made recently about the service, will the Secretary of State look at the whole matter once again to make sure that at least certain boards are not slipping up with regard to the ambulance service?

Mr. Maclay: I will certainly look at the matter. It would be helpful if any further cases which need examination were brought to my attention.

Derelict Sites (Clearance)

Mr. W. Hamilton: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will publish in the Official Report the names of those local authorities which have applied for and have been granted financial assistance for the clearance of derelict sites under the terms of the Local Employment Act; and whether he will indicate the purposes for which the grants have been made in each case.

Mr. Maclay: I am circulating the information for which the hon. Member asks.

Mr. Hamilton: Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether he is satisfied with the rate at which applications are coming forward? If he is not, can he tell us what is his opinion as to the


reasons for this tardiness in the applications? Is it not the case that the Toot-hill Committee recommended that the grants be increased in order to get the local authorities to be more forthcoming in their applications? Can the right hon. Gentleman say, further, what stage has been reached in the consultations between himself and Fife local authorities about the clearance of sites?

Mr. Maclay: That is really rather a handful for one supplementary question. The initiative does lie with the local authorities, who are fully informed of grant facilities. I should be glad to consider more applications. As to the question whether the level of grant is right, the standard rate of grant is 50 per cent., which we feel is a fair division between the Exchequer and the local authorities, bearing in mind that a cleared site is a permanent asset to the local community.

Following are the details:


Local Authorities to whom grant has been promised
Scheme


West Lothian County Council
1. Clearing of 8 acres abandoned colliery site at Armadale for school playing fields.



2. Remedial works on the Bog Burn, Bathgate, to improve amenity.



3. Removing a disused railway embankment at Fauld house to provide I acre of land for housing.



4. Removing small Bing at Fauldhouse for housing.


Coatbridge Town Council
1. Consulting Engineers Report on scheme for piping and infilling Monkland Canal (grant promised on fees).



2. Clearance of 37 acres Bing and Old Iron Works site at Sikeside for industry and housing.


Fife County Council
Rehabilitation of 9½ acres ex A.A. gun site at Halbeath for industry.


Renfrew First District Council
Infilling 28 acres of swampland at Muirend for recreation area.


Motherwell Town Council
Clearance of Parkhead Bing to provide 6½ acres of land for multi-storey housing and car park.

Glasgow-Kilmarnock Road

Mr. Ross: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland when work started on the Glasgow-Kilmarnock road; and when it will be completed.

Mr. Maclay: Work on improvement of this road from Eastwood Toll to Malletsheugh, including the reconstruction of Whitecraigs railway bridge, started in November, 1959, and is expected to be completed in September, 1962.

Classified Roads, Ayrshire (Maintenance and Repair)

Mr. Ross: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland how much he has allocated to the authorities in Ayrshire in respect of maintenance and repair of classified roads in 1962–63; and how this compares with 1961–62.

Mr. Maclay: The initial allocation of grant made to Ayr County Council earlier this month towards the cost of works of maintenance and minor improvement on classified roads in the county during 1962–63 was £192,000. The equivalent figure for 1961–62 was £200,050.

Mr. Ross: Does the right hon. Gentleman appreciate that the inadequacy of the provision in respect of classified roads is equalled only by the slowness in respect of the trunk road from Kilmarnock to Glasgow?

Mr. Maclay: I agree that all of us would like to have more money available for that road, but we really cannot do everything simultaneously.

Barlinnie Prison

Mrs. Cullen: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland whether, in view of the many serious incidents of violence in the past few months amongst prisoners in Barlinnie Prison, he will institute an independent inquiry.

Mr. Maclay: The circumstances of each incident of this kind are fully investigated as it occurs and I do not consider that an independent inquiry into recent incidents at Barlinnie would help.

Mrs. Cullen: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the number of stabbings has gone up to ten this year; and that the chaplain, who has been there twenty-four years, says these are the worst cases of violence he has seen during that time? Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the general public


want to know where the people in the stabbing cases get the implements they use for stabbing, and that the general public want to know more about it? I do not see that anything but an independent inquiry would be of any use to satisfy the general public.

Mr. Maclay: I am quite sure the hon. Lady will agree that what matters above all is to get this kind of thing stopped, and that is what our objective must be. As to the wisest and best way to achieve that, I should inform the hon. Lady that the police are informed immediately of every serious assault and are given facilities for questioning the prisoners and members of the prison staff. At the same time the governor carries out his own inquiries into the circumstances as affecting the discipline of the prison and the supervision arrangements. Each incident is inquired into very fully indeed.

Miss Herbison: All of us agree that the important thing is to get this stopped. Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that in these last few months there has been one stabbing incident after another? Is he also aware that, according to his own information, a local inquiry has been held in each case and that it has not prevented further instances of stabbing? Surely he must come to the conclusion that we need an independent inquiry into this matter, since those who have sons in the prison, and the people around the prison, are very concerned indeed about the continuing disturbances there? It would hearten them if the right hon. Gentleman were to accept what my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Gorbals (Mrs. Cullen) is asking for—an independent inquiry.

Mr. Maclay: I think I should inform the hon. Lady of some of the things done in reviewing the internal security arrangements. A number of measures designed to ensure the closer supervision of prisoners have been brought into operation. The exercise time of the prisoners has been changed to allow more effective supervision. Additional supervising officers are on duty at certain times. Special measures have been taken to open passageways to shorten the routes taken by bodies of prisoners. I shall continue to watch carefully to see how far these measures are successful.

Air-Raid Shelters, Glasgow

Mrs. Cullen: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland when he intends to remove the surface air-raid shelters in the City of Glasgow.

Mr. Maclay: It remains the policy of the Government to preserve sound airraid shelters so far as possible. I am, however, always prepared to consider whether in individual cases there are compelling grounds for removal.

Mrs. Cullen: Does the Secretary of State really believe that these shelters are of any use at all or ever were of any use? Back courts are cluttered up with them, people cannot get their washing out, and the shelters are used for all sorts of purposes. I am sure that if we had another war they would be of no earthly use at all.

Mr. Maclay: I do not think it would be sensible to get rid of something that would give a degree of protection in the event of another war.

Hon. Members: Oh.

Mr. Hannan: Will the right hon. Gentleman stop pretending to the House, an assembly of sensible men and women? Is he not aware that his predecessor indicated some years ago that he would consider these things? If these are just obsolete anachronisms in the nuclear age, will he not take a decision to dispense with them at the earliest possible moment?

Mr. Maclay: I really do not think that it would be sensible to dispense with them all at once, but I always have said that I will consider in any individual case whether there are grounds for removal.

Oral Answers to Questions — TRANSPORT

Vehicle Tests

Sir B. Janner: asked the Minister of Transport whether he will make a statement on the effect of the compulsory testing of cars more than seven years old in removing faulty cars from the roads.

The Minister of Transport (Mr. Ernest Marples): Up to the end of January, 1962, over 935,000 vehicles submitted for


test were refused a certificate on initial inspection. This represents 35 per cent. of all vehicles tested under the scheme. Precise figures are not available of the number of vehicles subsequently brought up to standard and passed, but a detailed analysis of a sample of the returns from testing stations indicates that about 5 per cent. of the total number of vehicles tested failed to qualify for a certificate. There are no means of telling how many vehicles were scrapped without submission to test because they were known to be faulty. The licensing records indicate, however, that the vehicles in the testable classes which were scrapped during 1961 appeared to show a sharp increase over previous years.

Sir B. Janner: Is the Minister aware that a very dangerous racket is still carried on by unscrupulous dealers in old cars? When certificates have been granted, a day or two later experts have said the cars are of no use, and cars in the meanwhile have been sold. Will the right hon. Gentleman see to it that some further protective measure is taken because certificates at present deal only with questions of lighting, steering and braking, whereas there are many other defects which ought to be considered before a certificate is granted. There are many other matters to be dealt with. Will the right hon. Gentleman see whether anything can be done in that regard, because this is becoming a public scandal?

Mr. Marples: If the hon. Member will give me details of what is becoming a public scandal and will be kind enough to send me the details of any particular cases, I will certainly look into them, but a general statement such as he has made is not really very satisfactory.

Mr. Strauss: In view of the great value of the testing of these cars in getting unfit cars off the roads, as shown by the Minister's Answer, can the right hon. Gentleman give any indication at the moment when he expects to be able to reduce the seven years to six years?

Mr. Marples: I cannot at the moment, but I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that it will be done as quickly as possible.

Sir S. Storey: Can my right hon. Friend say whether he has yet found a

means of bringing within the scope of the tests cars manufactured abroad more than seven years ago but not registered in this country until less than seven years ago?

Mr. Marples: No. We have not found an answer to that yet, but are looking into it.

Fraudulent Disposal of Motor Vehicles (Inquiry)

Mr. Wade: asked the Minister of Transport whether he has completed his inquiry into the fraudulent disposal of motor vehicles when subject to hire-purchase agreements; and what is the outcome of the inquiry.

Mr. Marples: This inquiry was put in hand in January of this year. As a first step the interests most closely affected were asked to submit their views and recommendations; these have been received and are now being studied.
I cannot say when the inquiry will be completed, or what its outcome is likely to be.

Mr. Wade: As to the outcome of this inquiry, is the Minister aware that there are still many cases of fraudulent sales which cause very real hardship for the unfortunate people who have been taken in, and in considering any remedy will he keep in mind the fact that a purchaser who pays cash is not protected by any voluntary arrangement between the hire-purchase companies designed to protect purchasers from this kind of deal?

Mr. Marples: I will consider the point which the hon. Member has made.

Oral Answers to Questions — ROADS

Rule of the Road

Mr. Donnelly: asked the Minister of Transport whether he will initiate an inter-departmental inquiry to consider the long-term advantages and the short-term costs of changing the rule of the road in Britain to driving on the right hand side.

Mr. Marples: I have already started such a study.

Mr. Donnelly: Can the right hon. Gentleman say when we may expect some form of report to the House on it?

Mr. Marples: No. I cannot say at the moment, but it was started some considerable time ago.

Road, Chalgrove (Public Inquiry)

Mr. John Hall: asked the Minister of Transport when the public inquiry was held Co consider the proposal to develop a road along the southern boundary of Chalgrove Airfield as an alternative to that section of the Oxford-Watlington road now diverted through Chalgrove village; and if any buildings or fencing had been erected on the airfield in advance of the inquiry, which would have been affected by the proposed line of the new road.

Mr. Marples: The public inquiry into road closures at Chalgrove Airfield was held by the War Works Commission on 7th February, 1962. Re-fencing of the airfield boundary for safety reasons was begun in June, 1961, and part of this will be affected by the line of the proposed new road. No buildings have been erected on this line.

Mr. Hall: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the erection of this fence, which I understand runs for about 1¼ to 1½ miles and has cost about £3,000 to £3,500, before the inquiry was held has given the impression that the company concerned thought the inquiry was merely a formality and that the necessary permission to close the road would be granted whatever objections were raised? Would my right hon. Friend like to comment on that?

Mr. Marples: It is not a formality. The fence can be realigned if it is decided to provide a new road inside the existing airfield boundary. There have been instances of dangerous trespassing on to the runways of the airfield and it was for that reason that fencing was necessary.

Mr. Hall: Is my right hon. Friend aware that a great part of the airfield is still open to trespassers?

Mr. Marples: Yes, but not as much as it was before the fence was erected.

Rochester Way, Woolwich

Mr. Turner: asked the Minister of Transport what plans he has for redeveloping the Rochester Way in the

Borough of Woolwich as dual carriageways; and when he hopes to authorise the commencement of this work.

Mr. Marples: The London County Council as improvement authority is investigating various ways of improving A.2 between Bexley and Greenwich. Until it has decided what scheme to adopt I cannot say when I am likely to be able to consider it for grant.

Mr. Turner: Will my right hon. Friend have another look at this matter with the London County Council and see whether he cannot expedite at least the section immediately on either side of the junction of West Mount Road where the trunk road develops into one-way traffic in either direction?

Mr. Marples: I think that my hon. Friend refers to Woolwich where the A.2 ceases to be a trunk road, and here the L.C.C. is now investigating three possibilities, as I confirmed this morning. First, there is the improvement of the A.2 on its existing alignment which involves the demolition of a large amount of residential property. Secondly, there is the linking of A.2 to Shooter's Hill over open space and the improvement of Shooter's Hill. Thirdly, the L.C.C. is considering the construction of a new road alongside or above the Bexley railway line to the L.C.C. boundary. This is being actively considered at the moment.

Mr. Marsh: Is there any point in continuing to develop the A.2 into a six-line carriageway until someone has made up his mind whether there really is any point in increasing the volume and speed of traffic when the road which joins it is already too narrow? The Minister is developing a six-line carriageway which will run into a bottleneck.

Mr. Marples: I do not think that is so. There is always the question when a new road is built that it takes traffic quicker and gets somewhere else where traffic conditions are more difficult, but one cannot build roads simultaneously all over the country.

Road Junction, Newcastle

Mr. Montgomery: asked the Minister of Transport whether he will erect signs at the junction of Sackville


Road and Addycombe Terrace, Newcastle, to show clearly which of these roads is regarded as the major road.

Mr. Marples: This is primarily a matter for the local authority but I am consulting it and will write to my hon. Friend.

Horsham By-Pass (Roundabout)

Mr. Gough: asked the Minister of Transport if he is aware that the proposed Horsham by-pass road provides for a roundabout at the A.281 crossing of approximately 620 feet in length and 435 feet in breadth; and how many other roundabouts of this size or larger are at present in use in the United Kingdom.

Mr. Marples: The plans for the bypass submitted to me by the West Sussex County Council, which is the highway authority, provide for such a roundabout.
The line of the by-pass and the land required for its construction were the subject of a public inquiry on 21st March. I cannot yet say whether the county council's plans will be approved.
There is one other roundabout of comparable size already in use; several are projected.

Mr. Gough: Whilst appreciating that a public inquiry has taken place, may I ask my right hon. Friend whether he thinks that the fifteen acres which will be taken up will provide a really modern solution? Will he please press for consideration of a road that will stall be up-to-date in about ten years' time?

Mr. Marples: The reason why the roundabout is so large is that it is in line with our policy which I stated on 7th June, 1961, of providing
flyovers in place of roundabouts at major traffic intersections where this is practicable and the volume of traffic justifies the additional cost. Some roundabouts will, however, continue to be built where they offer the most suitable form of junction. In appropriate cases new roundabouts are so designed as to permit conversion to a grade-separated junction should this become necessary later."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 7th June, 1961; Vol. 641, c. 91.]
That is the reason for what my hon. Friend thinks is excessive use of land.

County Surveyors' Society (Report)

Sir B. Janner: asked the Minister of Transport what reply he has sent to the County Surveyors' Society in regard to the recommendations contained in its report, which has been submitted to him, concerning increasing road traffic and the need for motorways.

Mr. Marples: As the report was sent to me only two days before it was made public, I have not yet had time to give it the full consideration which it deserves. I shall, however, be pleased to discuss it with representatives of the Society and the County Councils Association in the light of the studies which my Department is already making into future highway needs.
Meanwhile I shall continue to give priority to the large programme of motorways which I have already announced. These will provide very substantial relief to traffic between the large centres of population.

Sir B. Janner: Is the Minister aware that the vice-chairman of the Road Federation has stated that this report discloses a most revealing and disturbing analysis of the Government's shortcomings? Is he also aware that the report itself states that at present 1,700 miles of road are needed? Will he do something quickly about the matter?

Mr. Marples: These proposals would cost £1,000 million. They have been proposed by surveyors and they mostly relate to what happens between the towns. The great problem and the crunch in future is what happens when the traffic reaches the towns. They ignore that altgoether.

Sir B. Janner: Why not get on with it and get the money somehow?

Oral Answers to Questions — SHIPPING

Oil Tankers (Ports)

Mr. Awbery: asked the Minister of Transport if he is aware that ships with a registered tonnage of 130,000 tons are now being constructed for oil carrying purposes; and what ports there are in this country capable of accommodating vessels of this tonnage.

Mr. Marples: I assume that the hon. Member is referring to the tankers of some 130,000 deadweight, not registered, tons now being built in Japan. Under favourable conditions these could be received at Milford Haven and Finnart.

Mr. Awbery: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that we do not have one port in the country that can receive these ships, except at two jetties? Is he aware that if any under-water repairs are required these ships cannot dock in this country and they have to go abroad? Is this the way to maintain our maritime supremacy?

Mr. Marples: These ships can be received in Milford Haven under reasonable conditions. I said that quite clearly, but the point that the hon. Member is making is that there is not a dry dock to accommodate a ship of this size. I am not aware that there is a demand for a large dry dock at Milford Haven. One is being built at Greenock, one for Vickers on the North-East Coast as being built, and one at Cammell Lairds is to be opened shortly. Therefore, the dry dock facilities in this country have greatly improved in the last few years.

Mr. Mellish: Is not the tendency now to build larger and larger tankers and does not the right hon. Gentleman agree that we are not adequately equipped to deal with them? As the shipbuilding industry is not in a very bright position, would it not be possible for the right hon. Gentleman to have a look at this matter and to consider what forward planning we should have?

Mr. Marples: On the question of providing dry dock facilities to help the shipping industry, the 850 ft. Vickers dry dock is a good example. Then there is the dock at Cammell Lairds. There is the Grayson Rollo dock in Birkenhead, and in Greenock there is another dry dock on the stocks. I am glad to say that we are doing pretty well in this respect.

Mr. Awbery: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that even Milford Haven cannot receive these ships? They can come up to the jetty in Milford Haven but they cannot get into Milford Haven dock.

Mr. Marples: The point is that they can be received in that deep harbour

and can discharge their cargo. The fact that they cannot get alongside certain docks in Milford Haven has nothing to do with it.

Oral Answers to Questions — RAILWAYS

Electric Railway, Tyneside

Mr. Montgomery: asked the Minister of Transport what plans he has to meet the increased traffic congestion, on roads for which he is responsible in the Newcastle-upon-Tyne area, which will result from the proposed discontinuance of the North and South Tyneside electric train service.

Mr. Shinwell: asked the Minister of Transport if he will refer to the appropriate Transport Users' Consultative Committee the proposal by the British Transport Commission that the electrified lines from Newcastle to the coast should be closed.

Mr. Marples: I would refer the right hon. and hon. Members to the reply I gave on 21st March to my hon. Friends the Members for Tynemouth (Dame Irene Ward) and Newcastle-upon-Tyne East (Mr. Montgomery).

Mr. Montgomery: Is my right hon. Friend aware that that Answer did not allay the fears of people on Tyneside? Could he please confirm whether the correct procedure here is that the British Transport Commission makes proposals and the Transport Users' Consultative Committee makes recommendations on them to the Minister? May we have an assurance that my right hon. Friend has the last word?

Mr. Marples: I can certainly give that assurance. The Commission submits its proposals to the appropriate Area Transport Users' Consultative Committee and the Central Committee considers these findings and makes recommendations where closures are concerned. The recommendations then go to the Minister who makes the final decision. I therefore can confirm what my hon. Friend has said.

Mr. Shinwell: Is it not time that the Government told Dr. Beeching to stop mucking about with these lines? Are we not concerned with the interest of the public, apart from modernisation


and improvements and all the rest? Is this not an important consideration and will the Minister understand that if Dr. Beeching goes on in this fashion we will have to put down a Motion of censure on the gentleman?

Mr. Marples: The right hon. Gentleman, as the House well knows, considers that all transport should be a social service. I disagree with him entirely in that respect. What Dr. Beeching has to do, as I said the other day, is to try to get the right size and shape to the railway system and make it really workable.

BALLOT FOR NOTICES OF MOTIONS

Urban Central Redevelopment

Mr. Deedes: I beg to give notice that on Friday, 13th April, I shall call attention to urban central redevelopment, and move a Resolution.

Youth Service (Albemarle Report)

Mr. Hunter: I beg to give notice that on Friday, 13th April, I shall call attention to the Albemarle Report on the Youth Service in England and Wales, and move a Resolution.

Traffic Engineers

Mr. R. W. Elliott: I beg to give notice that on Friday, 13th April, I shall call attention to the need for more traffic engineers, and move a Resolution.

ROYAL ACADEMY OF ARTS (SALE OF WORKS OF ART)

3.31 p.m.

Mr. John Parker: I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to prohibit the sale of all Works of art owned by the Royal Academy of Arts.
I do not propose to say anything about the merits of the Leonardo da Vinci cartoon, or about the appeal that has been launched to buy it for the nation, but I would like to question the propriety of the Royal Academy and its moral right to offer it for sale. I would have thought that the Royal Academy had no right to offer for sale any of the works of art in its trust for the nation. It seems to me that, although it may have a legal right to do so, it has no moral right.
The records of the Royal Academy on the Leonardo da Vinci cartoon are extraordinarily inadequate. Its first record of the cartoon is when it was framed in 1791. However, there is a sketch showing it hanging on the walls of the Royal Academy in 1779, which is only eleven years after the Royal Academy was first created. There is no certainty as to how the Royal Academy came into possession of the cartoon. The traditional belief is that it was a gift of Sir Joshua Reynolds, the first president. He may have given it to the Royal Academy, partly to cover one of the vacant walls in the early days and partly because he thought that it was a safe place in which to place this work of art so that those interested in the arts could see it.
The important point is that there was no National Gallery in existence at that time, and my submission is that, had it been in existence, the cartoon would undoubtedly have been placed in its charge so that the nation could look after it properly and so that it could be seen by those interested in the arts. Certainly, I do not think that any donor would have given it to the Royal Academy if he had believed that, at a subsequent date, the Royal Academy would offer it for sale.
It is of some importance that the Royal Academy has in its trust quite a large number of other works of art of some significance. There are a Michelangelo marble relief, some fine Constables, and various diploma works


which Academicians have submitted as specimens of their work when they were made Academicians. Some of these various works which are in the care of the Royal Academy have some historical value. Perhaps twenty or thirty may be good pictures in themselves. I do not think that any of them were given to the Royal Academy by people who believed that they might be sold at some subsequent date. They were given so that they could be seen by students and others interested in the arts.
I was interested to see a letter in The Times from a rather naïve gentleman living in New York, who described the Royal Academy as an ordinary club and asked why it should not do what it liked with its own. The fact is that it is not just an ordinary club. It was set up under Royal patronage and with Royal assistance to encourage the arts. It has done, and is doing, useful work.
Most people would agree that the summer exhibitions and the assistance which it thus gives to artists in selling their pictures without commission is a worth-while job. Especially worth while are the winter exhibitions. But most of those who know the work of the Royal Academy consider that all of it is not of equal value.
It offers free art education for 100 students. I am certain that this side of its work was very valuable in the early days, but in recent years there have grown up all over the country a very large number of schools of art. The number of distinguished artists who have been trained in recent years by the Royal Academy School of Art is not as great as in the early days, and that is significant. I suggest, therefore, that this side of its work is much less important now than it was.
We are told that the Royal Academy has not the money to meet its needs at present, but wishes, at the same time, to remain independent. But is it to be the case that, whenever finance is short, the Royal Acadamy, in order to meet its deficits and find the money for what it wishes to do, does so by selling off not only this Leonardo da Vinci cartoon but all the other works of art in its trust? Are we to see another appeal, in a few years' time, for someone to buy the Michelangelo relief when the £800,000

which the Royal Academy hopes to get from the Leonardo da Vinci sale has been spent? Are the Constables to be sold later? Possibly even Burlington House itself might be sold. It occupies a very valuable site and a great deal of money could be obtained for it.
Ninety-nine years ago, at the instance of this House, a Royal Commission was set up to examine the affairs of the Royal Academy. It was a very speedy commission, for it was appointed in February and reported in July—which must be a record. The terms of reference instructed it to inquire
… into the present position of the Royal Academy and to suggest such measures as may render it more useful in promoting the arts.
I suggest that another Royal Commission might well be set up now to do just the same job. The Royal Commission had useful results. One of the things that followed from it was that the Royal Academy moved from the National Gallery, where it had a lease, into property of its own. Most of the other minor suggestions were also carried out.
There is a strong case for investigating the activities and finances of the Royal Academy. It does not publish its accounts. There is a strong case, especially at a time when an appeal is being launched to find £800,000, for our at least knowing how the Royal Academy spends its money and for hearing about how the £800,000 is to be spent, if it is obtained. After all, the public is to find the money, even if not through taxation. The nation, therefore, has a right to have information about the activities of the Royal Academy—more information than is given at present about how its money is spent.
The Royal Academy is very squeamish about direct public help, but is not so squeamish about getting it indirectly. Our experience in recent years shows that there is no real danger in this country of State interference in the arts. We have created a very happy arrangement here which is much admired in the United States and many other countries. By that arrangement, we give assistance in various directions without Government interference. We have, for instance, the University Grants Committee and the Arts Council.
Some hon. Members were complaining the other day that the Arts Council was rather too independent. But our solution, by which the Government of the day does not interfere with the way in which these bodies carry on their activities, deciding only how much money they are to receive, is a satisfactory way of giving assistance, however.
There is, therefore, a case for saying that we want to know rather more about how the Royal Academy carries out its affairs and how it spends its money. Until we have had some kind of report on its activities, we should not permit it to sell any more of the works of art in its charge. I repeat that they are in its charge on behalf of the nation, and are not there to be disposed of whenever the Royal Academy is in financial difficulty. We should not permit the Royal Academy to sell any of its works of art until we have further information and have had some kind of commission of inquiry.
I hope that the House will give me leave to introduce my Bill.

3.40 p.m.

Mr. Nicholas Ridley: I oppose the Motion. I appreciate the arguments which the hon. Member for Dagenham (Mr. Parker) has advanced, but I do not believe that it is right that this House should interfere in the private affairs of an academy or association of this sort.
The Royal Academy is a private institution. It was founded in 1768, mainly at the instigation of Sir William Chambers. At the start, it received Royal patronage. George III offered to make good any "deficiencies" in the initial stages of getting the Academy going, and I believe that up to 1780, when the "deficiencies" ceased, £5,000 had been extended from the Royal purse—an act of Royal extravagance that was not, I am happy to say, attacked by the Press barons of the day.
The Royal Academy, therefore, has been entirely independent for 182 years, and during those years it has done very valuable work indeed. It has provided free education for students in all branches of art, and has provided exhibitions of all those forms of art in this

country. It has also done much to organise lectures and exhibitions of all kinds, and I am sure that the whole country would acknowledge that its activities are very worth while.
The great thing is that here we have a private and voluntary organisation which has said publicly that it does not want to approach this House for public money. It does not want any subsidy, but wishes to maintain its independence from this House and the State. What a worthy and admirable principle that is. How nice it would be if more organisations adopted that attitude. I might add that I commend that attitude to the citizens of Orpington as well.
Parliament has no right whatsoever to interfere with the affairs of the Royal Academy, although it has attempted to do so on several occasions. In 1839, Parliament tried to control the accounts and to get the Royal Academy to publish a report on its activities. The Motion was carried at a late night sitting, but was reversed during the following morning, when that attempt was defeated by 38 votes to 33. I only hope that we have a bigger majority in killing the hon. Member's proposed Bill this afternoon.
I believe that there is no precedent for this House to interfere in the Academy's affairs. Further, I believe that it would be an intolerable infringement of the Liberty of private organisations should this House attempt to do so. Indeed, if the Bill were to reach the Statute Book I should not be surprised if it became known as the "Nosey Parker" Bill.
In addition, the principle behind the Bill is one of discrimination against one particular association, at the expense of one association, for the national good, and that is another principle to which I take objection. The Royal Academy maintains its affairs very well. It does not come to the House for public money, it is unsubsidised, and it is a thoroughly worthy institution. We have no right to interfere with its affairs, or to say whether or not it shall sell or otherwise dispose of its possessions.
The hon. Member is right to be concerned about the future of the Leonardo da Vinci cartoon, but under its present rules the Academy has every right to sell. Further, if it is short of money I think that the Academy has taken the


correct decision. Of the works of art it now owns—and the hon. Gentleman referred to them—there are about 40 oil paintings and 18 pieces of sculpture. All but three or four of the works are directly connected with the Royal Academy and with past Academicians. There are also these three or four works of art of great international value, of which one is the Leonardo da Vinci cartoon, which are in no sense connected with this country, the Royal Academy, or any part of our history.
The National Gallery is, of course, the correct place for these works, and no doubt had it been in existence when the Royal Academy was set up that is where they would have gone, but the National Gallery was not built until 1824—about fifty years later—so that there was no other repository for national works of art of this kind. That is probably how they found their way to the Royal Academy.
While the cartoon remains with the Royal Academy, the Academy's students, art students elsewhere in the country, members of the public and visitors from abroad cannot necessarily see it, whereas if it were in the National Gallery everyone could see it. It is surely more desirable that it should be in such a place as the National Gallery, where all can see it, rather than in a private institution which might not exhibit it all the time.

It is particularly unfortunate that the proposed Bill should be brought in at a time when we know that the Leonardo da Vinci is not to be sold at auction if the necessary sum of money can be raised by subscription. With some generosity, I think, the Academy has agreed to let the picture go for £800,000 when it might well have obtained more at private auction. That gives our people an opportunity to show, by their subscriptions, that they want the picture to stay here. Equally, if the hon. Member for Dagenham wishes the picture to stay in this country, he has his opportunity to subscribe towards that end. I hope that there will be a generous response to the fund, and that the requisite amount of money will be obtained from private subscribers without any public money going towards it at all.

I believe that, in the long run, the country will get the works of art for which it is prepared to pay, and that it is totally wrong to take a discriminatory short cut by means of a piece of bad legislation like this. I recommend the House not to give the hon. Member leave to bring in his Bill.

Question put, pursuant to Standing Order No. 12 (Motions for leave to bring in Bills and nomination of Select Committees at commencement of Public Business):—

The House divided: Ayes 81, Noes 157.

Division No. 136.]
AYES
[3.59 p.m.


Abse, Leo
Harper, J.
Mitchison, G. R.


Ainsley, William
Hart, Mrs. Judith
Moody, A. S.


Allen, Scholefield (Crewe)
Healey, Denis
Nicholson, Sir Godfrey


Awbery, Stan
Henderson, Rt. Hn. Arthur (Rwly Regis)
Noel-Baker, Rt. Hn. Philip (Derby, S.)


Bowles, Frank
Holman, Percy
Oliver, G. H.


Brockway, A. Fenner
Hughes, Cledwyn (Anglesey)
Proctor, W. T.


Butler, Herbert (Hackney, C.)
Hughes, Emrys (S. Ayrshire)
Rankin, John


Castle, Mrs. Barbara
Hunter, A. E.
Roberts, Goronwy (Caernarvon)


Cliffe, Michael
Hynd, H. (Accrington)
Silverman, Julius (Aston)


Cullen, Mrs. Alice
Janner, Sir Barnett
Silverman, Sydney (Nelson)


Davies, Harold (Leek)
Jones, J. Idwal (Wrexham)
Smith, Ellis (Stoke, S.)


Davies, S. O. (Merthyr)
Jones, T. W. (Merloneth)
Spriggs, Leslie


Deer, George
Kenyon, Clifford
Stewart, Michael (Fulham)


Digby, Simon Wingfield
Key, Rt. Hon. C. W.
Swingler, Stephen


Ede, Rt. Hon. C.
Lee, Miss Jennie (Cannock)
Symonds, J. B.


Edwards, Rt. Hon. Ness (Caerphilly)
Lewis, Arthur (West Ham, N.)
Taylor, Edwin (Bolton, E.)


Edwards, Robert (Bilston)
Lipton, Marcus
Thomas, George (Cardiff, W.)


Fernyhougth, E.
Loughlin, Charles
Thompson, Dr. Alan (Dunfermline)


Finch, Harold
Mabon, Dr. J. Dickson
Warbey, William


Foot, Dingle (Ipswich)
McInnes, James
Wells, Percy (Faversham)


Foot, Michael (Ebbw Vale)
Mackie, John (Enfield, East)
Wigg, George


Forman, J. C.
McLeavy, Frank
Wilkins, W. A.


George, Lady Megan Lloyd (Crmrthn)
MacPherson, Malcolm (Stirling)
Williams, W. R. (Openshaw)


Gooch, E. C.
Mallalleu, E. L. (Brlgg)
Worsley, Marcus


Gourlay, Harry
Manuel, Archie
Yates, Victor (Ladywood)


Greenwood, Anthony
Mason, Roy



Griffiths, Rt. Hon. James (Llanelly)
Mellish, R. J.
TELLERS FOR THE AYES:


Hannan, William
Milne, Edward
Mr. Parker and Mr. Jeger.




NOES


Agnew, Sir Peter
Glyn, Sir Richard (Dorset, N.)
Noble, Michael


Altken, w. T.
Goodhart, Philip
Nugent, Rt. Hon. Sir Richard


Ashton, Sir Hubert
Goodhew, Victor
Oakshott, Sir Hendrie


Balniel, Lord
Gower, Raymond
Osborn, John (Hallam)


Barlow, Sir John
Grant-Ferris, Wg. Cdr. R.
Osborne, Sir Cyril (Louth)


Batsford, Brian
Gresham Cooke, R.
Pannell, Norman (Kirkdale)


Baxter, Sir Beverley (Southgate)
Grosvenor, Lt.-Col. R. C.
Pearson, Frank (Clitheroe)


Bell, Ronald
Hale, Leslie (Oldham, W.)
Peel, John


Bennett, F. M. (Torquay)
Hall, John (Wycombe)
Peyton, John


Berkeley, Humphry
Hamilton, Michael (Wellingborough)
Pitt, Miss Edith


Bidgood, John C.
Harvie Anderson, Miss
Powell, Rt. Hon. J. Enoch


Biffen, John
Hastings, Stephen
Price, J. T. (Westhoughton)


Biggs-Davison, John
Heald, Rt. Hon. Sir Lionel
Proudfoot, Wilfred


Bossom, Clive
Hicks Beach, Maj. W.
Pym, Francis


Box, Donald
Hill, Mrs. Eveline (Wythenshawe)
Redmayne, Rt. Hon. Martin


Boyd-Carpenter, Rt. Hon. J.
Hill, J. E. B. (S. Norfolk)
Renton, David


Bromley-Davenport, Lt. -Col. Sir Walter
Hirst, Geoffrey
Rhodes, H.


Brooman-White, R.
Hobson, Sir John
Ridsdale, Julian


Brown, Alan (Tottenham)
Holt, Arthur
Roberts, Sir Peter (Heeley)


Browne, Percy (Torrington)
Howard, John (Southampton, Test)
Robinson, Rt. Hn. Sir R. (B'pool, S.)


Buck, Antony
Hughes-Young, Michael
Russell, Ronald


Bullard, Denys
Irvine, Bryant Godman (Rye)
Sharples, Richard


Butcher, Sir Herbert
James, David
Shaw, M.


Campbell, Sir David (Belfast, S.)
Jenkins, Robert (Dulwich)
Skeet, T. H. H.


Campbell, Cordon (Moray & Nairn)
Jennings, J. C.
Smyth, Brig. Sir John (Norwood)


Cary, Sir Robert
Johnson, Eric (Blackley)
Spearman, Sir Alexander


Channon, H. P. G.
Johnson Smith, Geoffrey
Stanley, Hon. Richard


Chataway, Christopher
Kaberry, Sir Donald
Studholme, Sir Henry


Chichester-Clark, R.
Kerr, Sir Hamilton
Talbot, John E.


Clark, William (Nottingham, S.)
Kershaw, Anthony
Temple, John M.


Cleaver, Leonard
Kimball, Marcus
Thatcher, Mrs. Margaret


Cooper, A. E.
Lagden, Godfrey
Thornton-Kemsley, Sir Colin


Cordle, John
Lancaster, Col. C. G.
Tilney John (Wavertree)


Costain, A. P.
Leavey, J. A.
Touche, Rt. Hon. Sir Gordon


Crowder, F. P.
Leburn, Gilmour
Turner, Colin


Cunningham, Knox
Legge-Bourke, Sir Harry
Turton, Rt. Hon. R. H.


Curran, Charles
Lewis, Kenneth (Rutland)



Dalkeith, Earl of
Lilley, F. J. P.
Vaughan-Morgan, Rt. Hon. Sir John


Dance, James
Lindsay, Sir Martin
Wade, Donald


d'Avigdor-Goldsmid, Sir Henry
Litchfield, Capt. John
Walker, Peter


Duncan, Sir James
Lucas-Tooth, Sir Hugh
Wall, Patrick


Eden, John
McLaren, Martin
Ward, Dame Irene


Elliott, R. W. (Nwctle-upon-Tyne, N.)
Maitland, Sir John
Webster, David


Emmet, Hon. Mrs. Evelyn
Manningham-Buller, Rt. Hn. Sir R.
Wells, John (Maldstone)


Errington, Sir Eric
Marlowe, Anthony
Wills, Sir Gerald (Bridgwater)


Farey-Jonee, F. W.
Marples, Rt. Hon. Ernest
Wilson, Geoffrey (Truro)


Finlay, Graeme
Marshall, Douglas
Wise, A. R.


Fletcher-Cooke, Charles
Matthews, Gordon (Meriden)
Wolrige-Gordon, Patrick


Freeth, Denzil
Maxwell-Hyslop, R. J.
Woodhouse, C. M.


Gammans, Lady
Montgomery, Fergus
Woodnutt, Mark


George, J. C. (Pollok)
Morgan, William



Gilmour, Sir John
Morrison, John
TELLERS FOR THE NOES:


Glover, Sir Douglas
Mott-Radclyffe, Sir Charles
Mr. Ridley and Mr. More.


Glyn, Dr. Alan (Clapham)
Nabarro, Gerald

HOUSE OF LORDS REFORM

3.57 p.m.

The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr. Iain Macleod): I beg to move.
That it is expedient that a Joint Committee of both Houses of Parliament be appointed to consider whether any, and if so what, changes should be made in the rights of Peers of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain or of the United Kingdom, and of Peeresses in their own right, to sit in either House of Parliament, or to vote at Parliamentary elections, and whether, and if so under what conditions, a Peer should be enabled to surrender a peerage permanently or for his lifetime or for any less period having regard to the effects and consequences thereof.
Reading through the different debates and discussions that this House has had,

particularly since 1948, on the question of House of Lords reform, I find one name cropping up over and over again, that of Clement Davies. He was the last remaining Member of the House who took part in the 1948 Conference. He was a member of the Committee of Privilege last Session Which considered the Wedgwood Benn case. He spoke on 13th April, 1961, and surely if he had been alive today he would have taken part in this debate.
In all the notices and obituaries that I nave read about Clement Davies, the same phrase keeps recurring, that he was a kind man, and it is the phrase that I would use. He was kind and generous; he was always both kind and generous


to me from the first day that I met him as a very new Member. I am sure that his great heart must have been cheered in his last days by the splendid victory that the party to which he gave so much secured. I think that we are poorer as a House and poorer as individual Members for his passing.

Hon. Members: Hear, hear.

Mr. Macleod: There is, of course, a good deal of history to the Motion which I have moved. The House will remember that following the debate on 13th April last year my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, who was then Leader of the House, gave notice on 26th April of the terms of reference for a Joint Select Committee. The terms of reference which I now put before the House differ in two respects, one major and one minor, from my right hon. Friend's proposals.
The less important point is that I do not now propose that we should include consideration of the principle of remuneration for Members of the House of Lords. The previous statement was made before my right hon. Friend the Chancellor's statement in July last year, but I would not wish to argue a special pre-pause commitment on this occasion. [HON. MEMBERS: "Two and a half per cent."] I cannot work out 2½ per cent. of three guineas quickly enough—but it is an interesting idea. It would be inappropriate to put forward this part of the original terms of reference now, although no doubt it is a matter that ought to be considered at some time. The important point in respect of which my Motion differs from that of my predecessor is in relation to what was paragraph (a) of his Motion—the composition of the House of Lords.
In the debate that centred upon the case of Lord Stansgate, or Mr. Wedgwood Benn—as one pleases—the Government indicated that there were matters beyond the question of renunciation which they would wish to study. These matters are enshrined in today's Motion. But we are not now suggesting that there should also be a review of the general composition of the House of Lords. If hon. Members will refer to the discussion in this House which followed the statement of 26th April last, they will see at once that the question of powers

was raised in this context, and also the question of the abolition of the hereditary principle.
The Government did not feel that there would be any profit in embarking upon a discussion of these matters, or that there would be any hope of agreement. They felt that there might not even have been agreement to proceed to set up a Joint Select Committee. Accordingly, we have decided not to put forward this wide and general point as part of the Motion. It has become clear that to do so would lead to a frustration of the whole case, and I believe that by proceeding in the way that is now proposed we have the best chance of a reasonable advance in this matter.
Before I come to the matters that are covered by the Motion it is right that I should make some reference to one point which, in my view—although it will be for the Joint Select Committee to construe its terms of reference—is not so covered. I refer to the possibility of Ministers in another place being entitled to address this House. The House will be aware that this suggestion was recently canvassed in The Times of 14th March. There are precedents in other legislatures for similar arrangements. Section 52 of the South Africa Act, 1909, provided for this. [An HON. MEMBER: "We do not want it."] I wish to argue the case whether this point is or is not within the terms of reference. I am giving my opinion that it is not. It is an important matter, on which I would wish to speak for a moment or two. Section 18 of the Government of Ireland Act, 1920, followed the precedent and reproduced the wording of the South Africa Act.
As hon. Members know, we, as Members of the House of Commons, have over centuries exercised the very strictest control in the matter of allowing strangers to address us in this Chamber. The occasions upon which peers have been invited to do so fall into three categories, as far as I can discover. The first is when the Lords ask leave to address the Commons for the purpose of thanking them for favours offered; the second is when they ask leave to address the Commons in connection with legal proceedings; and the third is when they are invited to give evidence on a subject which the Commons are investigating.
Apart from these special cases—and the last instance I can find of this is of the Duke of Wellington addressing this House in 1814—theme is no precedent since 1558. I have a quotation relating to what took place then, which is as follows:
The Lord Chancellor, the Lord Treasurer and several Lords came into the House, sitting where the Queen's Privy Council used to sit, and the Lord Chancellor, by his oration, declared that a subsidy must be had.
It is not recorded what were the observations of the Commons to the Lord Chancellor's observation, but I doubt whether it went with much of a swing.

Mr. Charles Pannell: I am surprised to hear the right hon. Gentleman quote these precedents, which were very much in my mind and also in the mind of the Leader of the House when we discussed the Wedgwood Benn issue. On that occasion the right hon. Member solemnity voted against the disputed peer coming to the Bar of the House. Why does he quote these precedents now?

Mr. Macleod: Because the case that we discussed a year ago does not fall within any of the categories that I have mentioned. It is clear from what I have said that there is no valid precedent for a Member of the House of Lords, in his capacity as a Minister of the Crown, addressing the Commons in their Chamber. My view, as a Minister whose name is put to the Motion, is that such a proposal would not be within the terms of reference that I am putting before the House. I leave that matter there.
The terms of reference that I propose are intended to cover questions of the surrender of peerages and the consequences thereof, and certain anomalies in the position of hereditary peeresses and Scottish and Irish peers. When we consider the question of the surrender of peerages I suppose that we think mostly in terms of a person being eligible to vote at parliamentary elections and to sit in this House. But behind these issues there lie many questions which the Joint Select Committee will be examining—questions of extinction or renunciation in favour of heirs, of certain privileges and exemptions, such as the right of individual access to the Sovereign which it attached to the

peerage, and questions about property that devolves, by Statute, upon the peers.
There are the questions—although they may be secondary questions—of which peers or classes of peers should be able to surrender their peerages; whose permission, if anyone's, they need; in what circumstances this right should be exercised, and for how long it should be held.
The Committee will also wish to consider, under the terms of the Motion, certain special problems that affect peers of Scotland—such as the question Whether non-representative Scottish peers should be entitled to sit in either House, to vote at parliamentary elections, or, in certain circumstances, to surrender their peerages. Similar points, which I need not itemise, affect peers of Ireland. In particular, there is the question whether they should be eligible for election to this House as Members for Northern Ireland constituencies as well as other constituencies.
Thirdly, there is the question of hereditary peeresses of England, Great Britain and the United Kingdom. It would be necessary to consider whether female holders either of baronies by right or hereditary peerages by grant should be entitled to sit in another place, perhaps despite an express prohibition in the grant—or should be entitled to sit in this House, or enabled to surrender their peerages.
This is a complicated field for the Committee's consideration, and I hope that the House will agree that we could not enter it without reference to the Upper House. This was explicitly recognised in the majority Report of the Committee of Privileges on the Wedgwood Benn Petition, and in the Amendments moved to it. That makes almost inevitable the use of the sort of machinery that I am suggesting—a Joint Select Committee. We cannot bind the Joint Select Committee as to its procedure before it is appointed; that would be unconstitutional. But some time ago we put in hand the preparation of the material that the Committee might require for its discussion, and this will be ready for it.

Sir Harry Legge-Bourke: My right hon. Friend mentioned the question of the non-representative Scottish peers and also the Irish peers. Would


he say whether the terms of reference as they are now drawn would permit the Joint Select Committee to go into the whole question of the possibility of English representative peers and non-representative English peers being eligible for membership of this House?

Mr. Macleod: The position about that is that it is for the Joint Select Committee itself to construe its terms of reference. I will ask the Attorney-General, who hopes to reply to the debate, to deal again with this point after considering it. My rather "off the cuff" view would be that the terms of reference I propose would not cover that specific point.
Freedom of decision on the action that a Government takes is, naturally, something that the Government must ensure and reserve for itself. Of course, I cannot be taken as binding the Government to introduce legislation to implement any recommendations that the Committee may make. When one considers matters relating to constitutional change it is always, if one can do it, highly desirable to move with at least some measure of all-party agreement and with the general consent of both Houses.
This is a particularly difficult subject and one where considerable divergence of view is to be expected. Nevertheless, I believe that the Motion I am putting forward, which concentrates on the question of surrender and its implications and also a considerable number of anomalies that I believe a Joint Select Committee could profitably examine, represents the most hopeful approach to this subject.
I hope therefore that, after debate, the Motion will command the support of the House.

4.12 p.m.

Mr. Hugh Gaitskell: The Leader of the House began his speech with a graceful and well-expressed reference to the death of Mr. Clement Davies. I should like to associate myself and my right hon. and hon. Friends with what he said about our late colleague. He was a kind man. He was a friendly man. I think that all of us had an affection for him. He was also a very staunch parliamentarian. He loved this House and he was devoted to it. Perhaps that was expressed most

clearly by his efforts to improve the remuneration and conditions under which hon. Members work here. We pay this tribute to his memory and express our sympathy with his widow and his family.

Hon. Members: Hear, hear.

Mr. Gaitskell: I find myself in the rather unusual position this afternoon of supporting a Motion which has been moved by the Leader of the House.

Viscount Hinchingbrooke: It is an agreed Motion.

Mr. Gaitskell: It will, perhaps, be no surprise to the noble Lord or other hon. Members to hear that the wording of the Motion has been substantially agreed beforehand. I see that the noble Lord is disappointed about the battle that he otherwise could have had with this side of the House, but when it comes to constitutional questions there is a case for trying to reach agreement, at least as far as we can go. The implication of the fact that we are supporting the Motion is, of course, that if the Motion is approved by the House we will agree to take part in the Joint Select Committee.
I do not pretend that this Motion will produce automatically the result, the change, that we desire. Nor can it be ignored that it comes a year later than we had originally hoped, but it is an important and, I believe, a decisive step towards a minor change in the House of Lords which is, nevertheless, extremely desirable.
The Committee of Privileges which considered the question of Mr. Anthony Wedgwood Benn was chiefly concerned with the existing law. I do not propose to say anything about that this afternoon, but even at that stage some of us who were members of that Committee believed that if, so to speak, we were wrong about the law—if, in fact, the law made it plain, as was subsequently confirmed by this House, that Mr. Wedgwood Benn could not retain his seat here—then there ought to be a change in the law to make such a thing possible.

Amendments were moved by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison) and my right


hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede) which expressed the view of the Opposition on this matter. I do not think that I need read those Amendments—they are probably within the recollection of the House—but we believed that a change in the law was desirable for very simple reasons. It amounted to this, that a man should be free, if he so desired, to rid himself of what he might regard as a disability, such as being unable to sit in the House of Commons and being obliged to sit in the House of Lords.

I do not think that in the House as a whole there is very much doubt or disagreement on this point. I think that we all agree and realise that it is an anomaly that a person who inherits a peerage should be debarred from sitting in the House of Commons.

There has been discussion about what should be done about it, but, looking through the previous debates on the subject, I certainly could not find a single speech in favour of the principle that a man who inherits a peerage should be obliged to give up his seat in the House of Commons and be debarred from either voting or being a Member of this House. The arguments at that time were of a limited character. They were as to whether a change was at that moment desirable, as to what consequences it might have, and so on. What we are principally concerned with now is to put right an anomaly, to get rid of an injustice, something which is unfair to a small number of persons, but, nevertheless, unfair for all that.

There are, as the Leader of the House said, some other minor problems which I agree should be discussed and considered by the Select Committee at the same time. It certainly is an anomalous position that if one happens to be a Scottish peer, but is not elected by one's fellow peers as a Member of the House of Lords, one should be debarred from being a Member of the House of Commons. It is, I think, an anomaly that if one is an Irish peer, other than a representative Irish peer, of whom I believe five remain—

Mr. G. R. Mitchison: I think one.

Mr. Gaitskell: I am told that it is only one. It is an anomaly that if one

is an Irish peer, other than a representative Irish peer, one should be allowed to be a Member of the House of Commons and that Scottish peers if not elected to the House of Lords may sit in neither House.
Equally, I do not think that one can accept the present position of hereditary peeresses. It seems to me that either they should be allowed to sit in the House of Lords, or they should be allowed to sit in the House of Commons. To be debarred from both is to deprive them of a right which every other citizen enjoys.
If one looks at the terms of reference one is driven to the conclusion that they leave open—and I may be wrong about this—the possibility of a Member of the House of Lords or, at any rate, of a peer sitting in the House of Commons. I noticed that the Leader of the House made it plain that he was not in favour of a Member of the House of Lords making a speech in the House of Commons, and, personally, I wholly agree with him, on that, but as I read the terms of reference which instruct the Joint Committee to consider whether changes should be made in the rights of peers to sit in either House of Parliament I am not quite sure that it rules out entirely the possibility of their sitting in both Houses of Parliament.
That is a point which perhaps the Government could clear up, but, whether it be within the terms of reference or not, I am certainly wholly against the idea that a Member of the House of Lords should be enabled to sit in the House of Commons, and I hope that if that cannot be ruled out by the Attorney-General, at any rate it will not be proceeded with.
There is the further possibility, to which I made reference, of a peer giving up the House of Lords, retaining his peerage, but nevertheless sitting in the House of Commons. I do not much favour that, either. It is a different point; he gives up his right to sit in the House of Lords and sits in the House of Commons as a peer, but the very terminology suggests that there is something a bit queer about that, and I think that it would be most undesirable, irrespective of whether it is within the terms of reference.

Sir H. Legge-Bourke: As the right hon. Gentleman made it clear to the House that he was consulted to some extent on the drafting of the Motion, will he say whether he agrees with the answer which my right hon. Friend gave to the question I put about the possibility of a representative peer for England being considered by the Committee?

Mr. Gaitskell: I think that I agree with the Leader of the House on that point.

Sir H. Legge-Bourke: If that be so, will the right hon. Gentleman please explain why he agrees with that, while, at the same time, he condemns as anomalous the position of non-representative Scottish peers?

Mr. Gaitskell: When one is talking about the terms of reference of this Committee, that is one thing, but what one's own views are is another thing. I think that the terms of reference should be reasonably wide because I do not want to dictate to the Committee; it is not our business to dictate to the Joint Committee, but one is entitled to express one's views and one's hopes on the conclusions which the Committee will reach. There is a legitimate distinction between those two points.

Mr. Macleod: Partly in response to the Leader of the Opposition and partly in response to my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for the Isle of Ely (Sir H. Legge-Bourke), may I say that I am not quite certain that my "off-the-cuff" interpretation was right? I should like to ask the Attorney-General to deal with the point. As the Leader of the Opposition said, and as I stressed, it is for the Joint Select Committee to construe its terms of reference, but I have a feeling on this point, if anybody wishes to pursue it—I have heard no particular case for it—that the question of English representative peers may be within the terms of reference. But I want to leave that to the Attorney-General.

Mr. Gaitskell: There are one or two points of obscurity, I must admit, about the terms of reference. I accept my responsibility for this, although perhaps the Leader of the House took the initiative in it. It is unfortunate that there is this obscurity, but, nevertheless, mere is a very big distinction between the terms

of reference, on the one side, and what one hopes will emerge from the Committee's deliberations.
There are two other points of substantial importance which the Committee will have to consider. One is the period of renunciation. There are obviously a number of possibilities here. At one extreme one could say that the renunciation should be absolute, not only for the lifetime of the holder of the peerage but also for all his progeny and their descendants. That happens to be the view of most of us on this side of the House, and I know that it was also the view taken by the hon. Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro) and, I think, by the hon. Member for Windsor (Sir C. Mott-Radclyffe), in the debate which took place last year.
There is the opposite extreme in which they are given the right to opt out of membership of the House of Lords and given the privilege of sitting in the House of Commons for a period even within their lifetime. I do not think that that would be acceptable to many of us. We cannot have a position where people can change their minds continually and opt between the House of Commons and the House of Lords.
There is the other possibility that a person in this position decides to renounce the peerage as far as he is concerned but this does not deprive his descendants of the chance of accepting it at a later stage when he dies. I do not much like that, although I believe that it has been recommended by some hon. Members and has been suggested in the newspapers. My own feeling, for what it is worth, is that if renunciation is to take place it should be absolute and should bring to an end a peerage as far as that person and his family are concerned.
The second question which the Committee will have to consider is to whom the right of renunciation should apply. Should it apply only to those who are not yet created peers, who have not yet inherited peerages? Should it apply to those who legally, if that is the right word, are hereditary peers but have not yet taken their seats? Mr. Wedgwood Benn is in that position. Or should it apply to all peers whether they inherit in the future or are already Members of the House of Lords?
My view, frankly, is that if this is a freedom to which those who inherit peerages in the future or who have not yet taken their seats in the House of Lords, although they have already inherited a peerage, are entitled, then it is a freedom which we cannot deny to those who happen already to be peers and who have taken their seats in the House of Lords. I do not think that it is fair to say to them, "By some bad luck there was no legislation in your time and you have not the right to change". I think that they should have the right to change, although that is my own personal view, on this question as it is on the other.
On the last occasion on which this matter was discussed the Government argued that we could not consider this narrow reform of the House of Lords on its own. They argued that we must consider the composition of the House of Lords and the remuneration and that these two things should be considered together with the problem of renunciation. The Leader of the House has explained why he does not think it appropriate that we should deal with the problem of remuneration. His explanation, I think, was a trifle disingenuous. He was able to rely, as so many people can, on the pay pause as an explanation of not doing the right thing, but for my part I think that it was right to leave this matter out of the Motion. I do not think that one should consider the question of the remuneration of the House of Lords in connection with a change of this kind, and I must frankly say to the right hon. Gentleman that if the issue of the remuneration of the Members of the House of Lords is to arise, many of us feel that the remuneration of- the House of Commons should also be considered.
In any case, since all that the Members of the House of Lords are paid at the moment is expenses, and remuneration is presumably not expenses, then an increase of 2½ per cent. on nothing is nothing and it would not help them very much.
We were opposed to the Government at this stage for the simple reason that we would not agree, and, I think, could not agree, to a discussion in the Select Committee of the composition of the House of Lords without bringing in what

is clearly relevant to the problem of the composition, namely, the issue of powers. I am glad that the Government have dropped their idea of including the composition in it, because this is the point which has made it possible for us to take part in the discussions. Either, we thought, the terms of reference should be narrow, and on what is essentially the problem of renunciation, or they should be much wider. The Government have decided, I think wisely, in favour of the narrower interpretation.

Viscount Hinchingbrooke: Can the right hon. Gentleman explain to the House why he thinks that the issue of powers is engaged only when the composition is changed by a system of election, and not in the way which he has been suggesting himself—by means of renunciation?

Mr. Gaitskell: I should have thought that the problem of powers was intimately related to the problem of composition. I did not say that the question of powers should not be considered on its own, but that is not what we were offered. What we were offered was the problem of composition being considered on its own. I should have thought that if we were to consider whether the composition of the House of Lords should be changed, we must also consider the question of what powers it should have, and it was on this particular point that we were unable to agree to the original Motion which was proposed by the Government.
I am not against the further consideration of the reform of the House of Lords—indeed, there are anomalies in the present situation—but there is no denying, as the Leader of the House himself agreed, that there might well be long delay in any considerations of this kind. If it is desirable, as I believe it is, that constitutional changes of this character should be made, by agreement if possible, there is no denying that there are many different points of view as to exactly what major reforms should be made in the composition and powers of the House of Lords. Therefore, had this question been included in the terms of reference, we might very well have had very long deliberations by the Joint Select Committee, without any real hope of agreement at the end of the day.
That itself would not have been a sufficient justification for holding up the comparatively minor reform—and it is a minor reform—which is envisaged in the terms of reference which are now proposed. After all, as I said earlier, almost all of us are agreed on the anomalous position regarding hereditary peers, and almost all of us agree that they should, in certain circumstances, be free to renounce those peerages. The fact that we all agree about this seems to me a reason for going ahead with this minor reform, and not getting ourselves entangled or held up in the wider issues on which it is very doubtful whether we should reach agreement.
For my part, I am very glad that the Government have changed their minds on this matter. I appreciate that this has always been the point of view of a number of members of the party opposite. For instance, I recall, particularly, the support given in the earlier debate on 13th April last year, and also in the later debate of 8th May, by the noble Lord who sits for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Viscount Lambton) to the idea of distinguishing between what is known as the Benn case and the wider issue of reform of the House of Lords. I am glad that the Government accepted that point of view.
Let me say, as has been said before, though it perhaps would do no harm to repeat it, that we have never looked upon this as a problem of how to enable Mr. Benn to take his seat here again. It is true that his particular case sparked off a train of thought and discussion which led to the debate today, but at no time have we suggested that special legislation should be passed to enable Mr. Benn to remain a Member of the House of Commons. It was always a question whether the law should be changed so as to make the renunciation of peerages under certain conditions possible.
I conclude by hoping that the Joint Select Committee will speedily reach an agreed conclusion on this matter, and that, in consequence of its conclusions, new legislation may be passed through both Houses of Parliament so that we may remedy the injustices and remove anomalies, and in that way satisfy ourselves that at last some advance towards a more rational constitutional position will be achieved.

4.35 p.m.

Sir Charles Mott-Radclyffe: This is a matter on which hon. Members on both sides of the House hold differing views, and in a debate of this kind this House is found to be at its best on an issue which outs right across party lines.
There are some hon. Gentlemen on the benches opposite who, quite openly, do not like a Second Chamber, and who would seek to remove it at the earliest possible moment. There are others who would not go as far as that, but who are always anxious to seize every opportunity gradually to erode and whittle down its powers. There are also former members of the party opposite, whom we all remember and whom we hold in great affection, who, in their younger days, no doubt gained a great many votes at election campaigns by making disparaging speeches about the House of Lords, and who are now happily adorning Opposition seats in another place and enriching its deliberations.
As both the Leader of the Opposition and my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House have said, many attempts have been made in past years to agree about some kind of reform of the House of Lords on an all-party basis, and there is no other basis on which it can successfully be carried out, but almost every attempt foundered, not so much on composition as on powers. I agree absolutely with what has been said—that when we come to try to discuss between the Government and the Opposition the question of the powers of another place, we are almost bound to get violent disagreement.
There are certain obvious anomalies referred to in the Motion which clearly ought to be discussed, because nothing in this life is static, and neither we in this House nor noble Lords in another place are removed, so to speak, from the process of evolution. Clearly, it is quite anomalous that hereditary peeresses should neither be able to sit in the House of Lords nor to stand for election in the House of Commons, whereas life peeresses, whom we have created, sit in the House of Lords. Equally, there is the anomaly, to which the right hon. Gentleman referred, of the non-representative peers for Scotland, who are out on both counts, whereas Irish peers,


though they cannot sit in the House of Lords, can stand for election here. This is clearly an absurd anomaly, and it is quite time that this matter should be discussed in order to see whether there cannot be some satisfactory solution.
As the Leader of the Opposition said, these issues are comparatively small ones. Though they are important small anomalies, they are not the real issue. The real issue we are discussing, and the real issue which lies behind the Motion before the House, is the issue of the Stansgate case. This is the crux of the problem. I have said before in a previous debate and other hon. Members have said it, we all have very considerable sympathy for the plight, the bad luck—if that is the right phrase—of the present Lord Stansgate.

Mr. William Ross: And injustice.

Sir C. Mott-Radclyffe: I am coming to that in a minute. He was anxious to remain in this House, and was balked from his desire by the law. The law was quite firm on the subject, and, happily, the electoral law cannot be altered by ballyhoo. At first sight, it may seem unreasonable that the eldest son of a peer—

Mr. Gerald Nabarro: Is my hon. Friend's reference to "ballyhoo" a reference to my speech which followed his own in the last debate? I strongly supported reform of the electoral roll. I regard it as a most impertinent remark.

Sir C. Mott-Radclyffe: I was not referring to the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro) though, if I had thought of it in time, I might have done. In fact, I was referring to certain aspects and elements in the election campaign of the present Lord Stansgate.
Although, at first sight, it may seem entirely unreasonable, and, as my right hon. Friend said, unjust, that the eldest son of a peer on succession to the peerage cannot remain a Member of this House if he wants to, none the less, I think that we have to be a little careful about this, and be certain that in the

process of solving one problem we do not create a large number of other problems. If we are proposing to pass legislation by which the eldest son of a peer on succession to the peerage can renounce his peerage and stay a Member of this House, or alternaitvely, stand for election to this House, we are bestowing on that individual a new privilege which is not enjoyed by anybody else.
We are saying that the eldest son of a peer on succession to his father's peerage may opt or choose whether to sit in the House of Commons or in the House of Lords. It may be a perfectly fair choice to make. I am simply making the point that this is conferring on that person a fresh privilege which is not at the moment enjoyed by any other Parliamentarian.

Viscount Hinchingbrooke: My hon. Friend is entirely wrong. Everyone who is approached with a view to becoming a peer, whether a Member of the House of Commons or otherwise, has precisely that choice.

Sir C. Mott-Radclyffe: I was not on that point.

Mr. Nabarro: It is a jolly good point.

Sir C. Mott-Radclyffe: Of course, a person can refuse to have a peerage conferred upon him. But this is a question which arises because, on his father's death, the eldest son of a peer automatically inherits his father's obligations.
Secondly, there is the very difficult problem, which was referred to by the Leader of the Opposition, as to whether heirs to peerages should renounce on succession their peerage for life in order to stay in the Commons, or whether they should be allowed, so to speak, to "scrub out" the peerage for all time. If they are to be allowed simply to renounce a peerage for life, we get the position to which the Leader of the Opposition referred in a slightly different context—the rather strange position—of successive generations opting in and out like jacks-in-the-box in respect of certain hereditary obligations. The second Viscount Stansgate wishes to renounce his peerage and stay in the Commons. The third Viscount Stansgate de jure may opt to go to the House of Lords; I do not know. The fourth Viscount may well wish to do neither.
I am not at all certain it is right that we should, as it were, allow an individual, whether peer or otherwise—because this could affect a much wider category of hereditary factors—to opt in or out in successive generations in relation to certain obligations. On the other hand, as the Leader of the Opposition suggested, there is the view that in order to stay in the Commons a peer should renounce his peerage not only for his lifetime, but for all time, that is, completely obliterating that peerage. This might create a very difficult position.
I wish to put this point to the House. Can we confine the right to renounce once and for all a peerage solely to those with political ambitions? If it is proposed to confer upon this category this right, we must, in all reason, admit that there may be other reasons for renouncing a peerage which are just as valid, but which have nothing to do with politics. This creates a very dangerous situation. We should have to guard against the possibility of the holder of an old title who has no son, and whose heir is a very distant cousin of whom he may strongly disapprove for various reasons, saying, purely out of spite, "I do not want so-and-so to inherit my title on my death, so I am going to scrub it out." This would be a dangerous thing to allow. This problem has far wider implications than satisfying one man's ambition in a long and honourable family history.

Mr. Mitchison: I agree with what the hon. Gentleman has said about the difficulties of renouncing for one life only. I do not follow him in this difficulty. There is no intention of driving anyone into the House of Lords. Some people want to vote and consider that their vote is of importance. At present, a peer cannot vote. Surely he should be allowed to if he wishes to do so.

Sir C. Mott-Radclyffe: The point I was seeking to make was that if a Joint Select Committee recommended altering the present law we should have to choose between allowing a peer on succession to renounce his peerage for his lifetime, or scrubbing out the peerage for all time, as it were, so that the peerage would be completely obliterated. This is a very difficult dilemma and one which any

Committee set up would have to consider carefully. In my view, both courses—to renounce for life or for "keeps"—are fraught with all sorts of difficulties and dangers. The implications are much wider than some would appear to think.
My second objection to altering the existing law is this. If any peer on succession with ability or political ambition is, so to speak, to be encouraged to confine his political activities to this House rather than to go to another place, we shall be left with a second Chamber composed largely of life peers, plus a few hereditary peers of not very marked ability—[Laughter.] My noble Friend the Member for Dorset, South (Viscount Hinchingbrooke) would be sitting in this Chamber.
I have always taken the view that one of the problems with which we are confronted in the second half of the twentieth century is the need to ease the burden imposed by the machinery of government on certain overworked Ministers. I hold the view—I am making no party point about this—that it would be extremely beneficial if, for the sake of argument, the Foreign Secretary were nearly always in the House of Lords. It was overwork at the Foreign Office plus the work in the House of Commons which killed Mr. Bevin, and the Labour Party could ill afford to lose him. It was overwork at the Foreign Office and in this House which led to the illness of Lord Avon, when he was Sir Anthony Eden, and there are other examples which may be recalled. One, less applicable in this context, which comes to my mind is that of the late Sir Stafford Cripps, because he was in a different category as Chancellor of the Exchequer. It was simply overwork which killed him—

Mr. C. Pannell: A seat in the Lords would not have helped him. It would have killed him straight away.

Sir C. Mott-Radclyffe: I should judge any findings or recommendations of a Joint Committee by one yardstick only—would it strengthen or weaken the vigour and the reputation of the House of Lords as a second Chamber? I believe that to be the only yardstick by which any recommendation or change ought to be judged.

4.50 p.m.

Mr. Dick Taverne: As this is the first occasion on which I rise to address the House, I ask hon. Members for the usual indulgence. There is only one circumstance for which I am profoundly thankful in facing this ordeal, namely, that no accident of birth has made me face it in another place and that, unlike other people, I am not prevented from speaking here. My task is made no easier by the fact that I succeed a previous Member of Parliament for the Lincoln constituency who, I understand, was held in as high regard in the House as he was by his constituents. If I can only partly maintain the high standard that he set, I shall be fully satisfied.
It may seem somewhat curious that I launch forth on my maiden voyage in a debate in which essentially domestic Parliamentary matters are being discussed, and ones of considerable constitutional complexity. I do so for two reasons. First, I was one of those who gave evidence before the Committee of Privileges which considered the case of the former Member for Bristol, South-East, so the matter is not entirely strange to me. Secondly, I have always been a student of the British Constitution and have always been a particular admirer of its flexibility, the way in which, over the centuries, it has adapted itself to meet the changing demands of different times. This is one of the occasions when its flexibility is being put to the test.
At least three problems arise when considering the question of renunciation of peerages. The first concerns the electors of Bristol, South-East and their interests. In 1955, the Bristol City Council petitioned both Houses of Parliament that Mr. Wedgwood Benn should be allowed to renounce his title. The Petition was refused. About a year ago the electors in Bristol, South-East showed overwhelmingly that they wished to retain their previous Member. The Conservative vote dropped by about 50 per cent., which would make even Orpington look like a victory by comparison.
Personally, I hope that Mr. Wedgwood Benn will continue to fight in Bristol, unless or until the law is changed. The electors there want him as their Member and they should be free to choose

the Member of their choice. I am sure that a way can be found to solve this problem. In the interests of the electors in Bristol, South-East, it should be done before the General Election.
The second problem concerns the personal issues. Some hon. Members opposite may have engaged in a certain amount of heart-searching about the possible implications. It has been suggested that any change in the law should not be retrospective and should not benefit anyone who has already succeeded to a peerage. But Mr. Wedgwood Benn executed an instrument of renunciation of his peerage at the first opportunity. He was the first person in history, as far as I can remember, with the possible exception of Robert Villiers, in the seventeenth century, who was prepared not only to renounce his title, but to extinguish it for all posterity.
Mr. Wedgwood Benn has not taken his seat in another place. Therefore, any change in the law which would allow him to take his place here on being elected would not require to be retrospective. There is no reason why a simple law should not be passed saying that anyone who has not taken his seat in the House of Lords should be free to take his place in the House of Commons on election. I am not concerned with whether the renunciation which this would involve should be for life or should be permanent.
But, in any case, why should not there be retrospective legislation for others? It is one thing to pass laws which retrospectively take away people's rights. Surely there cannot be the same objection to a law which retrospectively confers rights. In any event, it would be an irony if the person whose battles have led to the setting up of this Joint Committee, namely, Mr. Wedgwood Benn, should not be allowed to benefit from any result it might produce. The Joint Committee should have enough ingenuity to set a suitable price. The price should be set so high that anyone who wishes to renounce his peerage to sit in this House should be prepared to make a sacrifice to pay it.
The third and by far the most important issue raised is one of the widest possible principle. As my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition said, we are not seeking to change the


law to benefit one man. After all, the disqualification on Catholics was not removed to benefit solely Mr. O'Connell. Nor that on Jews to benefit Rothschild. Nor that on atheists just to benefit Charles Bradlaugh.
The glaring fact, surely, is that our constitutional laws must once again be adapted to meet a new challenge. Our peerage laws are out of date. To most of the younger generation our peerage laws seem absurd. Previous debates have shown that to many of the younger and more progressive hon. Members opposite our present peerage laws seem out of date.

Mr. Nabarro: Hear, hear.

Mr. Taverne: The hon. Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro) has signified his agreement. When the Report of the Committee of Privileges was being debated here I sat under the Gallery and heard a number of speeches by hon. Members opposite with which I agreed, including that of the hon. Member for Kidderminster. He said that he spoke for the young and progressive element in his party.
Perhaps I may quote the principle which was laid down or confirmed in the leading case, namely, the Norfolk peerage case of 1907, which finally established that peerages could not be renounced. These are the much quoted words of Lord Davey, who, after saying that a man cannot alienate a title of honour, went on to say:
… the reason is this, that it is a personal dignity which descends to his posterity and is fixed in the blood.
So a seat in another place and one of the disqualifications from sitting in this House depends on, and is determined by, the doctrine of a
dignity… fixed in the blood.
When stripped of this rather elegant phraseology, this surely amounts to no more, basically, than a doctrine of tribalism. I do not wish to seem unduly disrespectful to another House in my maiden speech. Therefore, I say at once that it is quite the most dignified and elegant form of tribalism there could possibly be.
However, the fact remains that in the 1960s, when the problems of government of this island are becoming increasingly complex, when the future of this country

becomes increasingly uncertain, when Russians and Americans have advanced sufficiently in their scientific knowledge to send their men circling the globe in space, the present laws of our Constitution say that the question of who can sit in the Upper House and play a part in government and who is disqualified from sitting here and playing a part in government is determined by blood.
As I said earlier, to most of the younger generation this is laughably absurd. I campaigned in my election at Lincoln to a large extent on the theme that there are far too many things in Britain which are out of date. This is perhaps one of the most distressing examples of the way in which we are not facing the problems of our times. How can we hope that people will respect and maintain a respect for our Parliamentary institutions when they have this element of tribalism built into them?
We are hoping that our form of Parliamentary institution will be copied elsewhere. The number of Parliaments is decreasing. News has just come of a military coup in Syria and there is similar news from the Argentine. How can we hope that our Parliamentary institutions will be adopted by new countries if our model continues to contain as many anomalies as it does? I hope that a future Labour Government will erase the anomalies from the Constitution in a way which would be far more fundamental than the terms of reference for this Committee.
The matter has now been under discussion for some time. It was first raised in 1955, and since then on a number of occasions the Government have rather sidestepped the issue. When life peerages were created, they refused to consider the renunciation of peerages. When the Committee of Privileges reported, again nothing was done. Now at last something is being done and there is no reason whatever why there should be any long delay. When the Life Peerages Bill came forward, it was not considered necessary even to set up a Select Committee. I welcome the fact that a Joint Committee is to be set up, but I hope that there will be no delay and that the Report of the Committee will be debated in the House before the Summer Recess.

5.2 p.m.

Viscount Hinchingbrooke: I think that the whole House will agree that we have had one of the most refreshing, enjoyable and able maiden speeches in recent experience. Having just been the guest of the predecessor of the hon. Member for Lincoln (Mr. Taverne), in Ghana, and still owing him a bread-and-butter letter, I shall take the opportunity of telling him what a distinguished performance his successor has put up. We have heard of the hon. Member before for has notable contributions in the Wedgwood Benn discussions and for the ability with which he conducted his part in the proceedings upstairs. I am sure that the House is looking forward with anticipation and expectation to being able to indulge in controversy with him when next he intervenes to take part in our debates.
I rise for only a short time and chiefly for the reason that I find it extremely distasteful, being deeply involved in this issue, to have to represent feelings of any kind to the House and the public. I suppose that I am of a different nature from Mr. Wedgwood Benn.

Mr. Nabarro: Different blood.

Viscount Hinchingbrooke: Perhaps when I have finished what I have to say the House will not be in the same mind as I am myself at this moment.
I should like to ask my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General to take an early opportunity of rising in the debate to put something straight which has gone slightly wrong. I am sure that by leave of the House he could then make his valued contribution later. The question which my hon. Friend the Member for the Isle of Ely (Sir H. Legge-Bourke) raised was answered equivocally by the Leader of the House. If the question of English representative peers is to be made the subject of discussion by the Joint Select Committee, that is to raise the whole issue of the composition of the Chamber, upon which the Labour Party has declined to associate itself, having refused to allow the words relevant to it to appear in the Motion.
That alters the character of the situation completely. If the Joint Select Committee is to be allowed to discuss the composition of the House of Lords,

not as changed by the rather simple process which the Leader of the House described with regard to eldest sons and peeresses and arbitrary renunciations and things of that kind, but wholesale by discussion of the representative English peerage system, that will widen the terms of the debate. Hon. Members who may have come prepared with some schemes to impart to their colleagues on the elective principle and the formation of an electoral college, and so on, such as one can find raised in the Select Committee on the Lords which sat under Lord Rosebery in 1908, will be enabled to allude to them in the debate, knowing that the Committee will have power to consider them. I hope that at an early stage my right hon. and learned Friend will make clear what the situation is.
This is another example of what is becoming all too common today—the disposition of the Government to secure the assent of the Opposition before they proceed to legislate. What might have been a magnificent performance of the Joint Select Committee and what might have engaged the full and excited interest of the country, after an unnecessary delay of twelve months—twelve months since the Wedgwood Benn Report and eight months since the debate on the original Motion—has become, by leave of the Opposition, as with so many other things, including the capital gains tax, this relatively slender issue.
It was news to me that the Labour Party had solidified itself on this question of the renunciation of peerages. It was only one of the pleadings of its disciple and devotee, Mr. Wedgwood Benn. The other pleading was that the substance of the issue—the writ of summons—should be a major factor in determining proceedings. I will come to that before I conclude.
I hope that we can turn the Labour Party from the view that the surrender of peerages is the right way of making these changes. If we can widen the terms of the debate, there is a great deal to be said for an elective process with a college of the peerage. I am amazed to read the detail into which the Select Committee of Lord Rosebery went—the numbers of those who would be first generation peers, the number of those who would be elected peers and the


question whether peers should be made from proconsuls, High Commissioners, and so on, from abroad. All these questions were gone into as long ago as that time, and the Report is well worth reading today if we are to admit the possibility of this sort of change.
I am entirely against the idea of the renunciation of peerages and I am rather surprised to hear that some of my hon. Friends have taken to this principle. I would be the last to want to give up, either for myself or for my entire family, the association with what I regard as an honoured and distinguished name which has come down a certain distance through history. It seems to me to make no difference at all as to whether it has a handle to it. To give up my name at the moment and that to which I trust I am heir to, and to become plain Mr. So-and-So, would mean that I was changing my name.
There are hon. Members here who might look back to some very distinguished names in their own ancestry from which they are directly descended, or with which they are associated, and they might wonder whether they would like to be put in the same circumstance of breaking the link with those distinguished names and become somebody quite different. I should have thought that there were other ways in which the composition of the House of Lords could be changed than by taking people out of it by the renunciation of their titles.
I have no desire whatever to enter the House of Lords. I think of it as inverting Lord Baldwin's famous dictum and being a place of responsibility without power. It is weighed down by responsibility. It carries with it a sort of dead weight of history. I rather agree with the feelings which the hon. Member for Lincoln so well expressed. It is over-encrusted with ancient pageantry and is becoming a sort of museum piece. People flock to see it as they would flock to see the mansion of some duke or earl in the countryside. I met a lady coming away from the Lords Chamber the other day who turned eagerly to her companion and said, "What a pity it was that we did not see them with their cornets on". The House of Lords is weighed down with effete

responsibility and it has practically no power.
It is natural justice that the House of Lords has no power. It committed the grievous political error, which all history has judged as fatally demeaning, of exhibiting rank cowardice. It was rankly cowardly in 1910. Instead of standing up for its principles and taking the consequences it ran away. Incidentally, the consequences would have been very agreeable and we would have had a very large assembly of most distinguished Liberals in the House of Lords today and perhaps a few of the early Labour men, turned Tories by this time, and it would not have been necessary to indulge in these rather petty devices of making Socialists life peers in order to carry on the debate.
It ran away from its responsibilities in 1945. The last thing that this country really wanted to see was the implementation of Socialism in our time. The electorate voted in 1945 to get out of the war, and voting for the Labour Party was the best way of doing it. They did not want to see the immediate implementation of the nationalisation of the means of production, distribution and exchange. The House of Lords ought to have realised that and stood up against it. It was frightened and it ran away. It is weaker today as a result of the Labour Party's manœuvres against it than it was in 1945. This is what comes to institutions in history when they show no courage and no enterprise and do not stand up for their beliefs. I have no desire whatever to go there and I hope-that I shall be long spared from that painful duty.
May I conclude by referring to what was the other plea of Wedgwood Benn, to which no attention has been given so far in the debate today. This is the issue of the writ of summons. These documents have been quoted before and I have no intention of inflicting them on the House. They are very lengthy and ancient in their verbiage. This is Mr. George Nathaniel Curzon talking in a Memorandum to the Select Committee on the Law and Practice of Parliament in reference to the vacating of seats in the House of Commons 1895. This memorandum was, of course, referred to by those in the Select Committee on the Wedgwood Benn case.
I would read just three or four paragraphs very briefly to the House, because they contain the issue:
Whether a peer can or cannot continue to sit and vote in the House of Commons upon his succession to a peerage, his seat in that House cannot be vacated, and a writ for a new election cannot be issued upon the grounds of such succession, until the House of Commons is possessed of conclusive evidence that he has become a peer.
Such evidence the House of Commons has never hitherto procured and has no existing means of procuring for itself. It is furnished, and is furnished only, by the issue of the writ of summons to the House of Lords.…
The writ of summons to the House of Lords is only issued upon certain information given and certain evidence of succession supplied, either by the peer himself or by some other person, acting upon his behalf, to the Lord Chancellor.…
It appears accordingly that the disqualification of a peer from continuing to vote in the House of Commons, if he be already a Member of that House, arises not from his succession to the titles and dignity of a peerage, but from his summons to the House of Lords, i.e., not from his inherited status as a Peer of the Realm, but from his acquired status as a Lord of Parliament, this being a familiar distinction in the law and practice of the constitution. In other words, disqualification is not inherited, but a parliamentary disqualification, and is based, not upon ennoblement of blood."—
how I agree with that phrase used by the hon. Member for Lincoln—
but upon incompatability of double service.
I think that we are all united in believing it right that an individual should not have the right to be in both Houses at once. It goes on:
It ensues, therefore, that a peer, in the interval between his succession and his summons, if already a Member of the House of Commons, continues to be so; and further that, until or unless he applies for the writ of summons, he will so continue.
How about a short Bill of one Clause—"Any man or woman being of the age of 21 and being a person eligible to sit in the Upper House of Parliament who has not received or has not accepted a writ of summons to sit in the Upper House shall be eligible to stand for, sit, and vote in the House of Commons."?
That would be the beginning and end of the Bill. It would have satisfied the Wedgwood Benn case. It would satisfy all other like cases, and it would deal with the situation because it is rooted in history, as I believe these

quotations show and as the evidence in the Wedgwood Benn case showed.
I hope that the Joint Select Committee, whose appointment, even at this belated time I warmly welcome, will, if it finds itself debarred from considering the wider issues of reform on the elective principle, devote its mind to this particular and most important change.

5.19 p.m.

Mr. Donald Wade: At the outset of the debate the Leader of the House, in a few very well-chosen words, referred to my beloved former colleague, Clement Davies. In the absence of my right hon. Friend the Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond) and some of my other colleagues, who are today attending the funeral in Wales, may I add a few words myself?
It is never easy to find suitable words with which to pay a fitting tribute to a distinguished statesman who has been a Member of this House for a number of years, and I think that it is all the more difficult when he is a close friend. Although Clement Davies was very much older than myself, I cherished his friendship greatly as well as appreciating his good counsel. He was passionately concerned about social justice, and also, as the Leader of the Opposition has said, he was a staunch Parliamentarian.
Whenever issues arose affecting Parliament, Clement Davies always based his decision upon what appeared to be the best interests of Parliament and the best traditions of our Parliamentary life. That was so not only in our debates here, but in the more intimate discussions of our Parliamentary party. "Clem" sacrificed much for his political beliefs. To those outside who are all too ready to decry politics and politicians I would say that he is one who set an example, one who, in public life, always put principles before self-advancement.
Now, if I may turn to the Motion, I should like to say that I find no serious criticisms to make of the Motion itself except the uncertainty as to what the terms of reference may be intended to cover. The Motion ends with these words:
… having regard to the effects and consequences thereof.


I shall refer to those words again in a few moments. I hope that these words will be given a wide interpretation, but if the task of the proposed committee is limited to renunciation and to the implications of the Wedgwood Benn case, then I fear that it will only be tinkering with the problem. I hope, therefore, that the outcome of its deliberations will be something much more radical than is suggested by the terms of the Motion.
But on the specific issue, namely, as to whether an heir to a peerage should be entitled to choose to stand for election to or to remain in this House, or as to whether a peer should have the right to renounce, I have no doubt in my mind at all. I do not think that anyone should be compelled to sit in the other place against his own will, whether he be the oldest son or whatever he may be. I do not think that anyone should be compelled merely by virtue of birth to be a Member of the Legislature.
It seems extraordinary that this reform has not been carried out long ago. In the final debate in the Lords on the Reform Bill of 1832 the Tory Earl of Winchelsea said, "I suffer a pain of mind greater than I can express in thinking I have lived to this age to witness the downfall of my country. This night will close the first act of the final tragedy." There was no such final tragedy and Parliament continued to develop into a considerably more democratic body than it was before 1832.
It is strange how long the country put up with rotten boroughs prior to 1832. I do not want to press this analogy too far, but I think the day will come when we shall look back and wonder how we put up so long with the illogical and undemocratic constitution of the House of Lords and the fact that a Member of this House should be compelled unwillingly to lose his seat here and be called to sit in the other place against his will merely because of the chance of birth.
It is especially surprising when one considers some of the indirect consequences—for example, the fact that it might well have happened that the right hon. Member for Woodford (Sir W. Churchill) would have been unable to fulfil his rôle of Prime Minister during the dark days of the war because he might have been a Member of the other place.
If, however, we are to limit our consideration to this particular reform arising out of the Wedgwood Benn case, we have to consider how the right of surrender is to operate. Here, I would make a distinction—I do not know whether the noble Lord the Member for Dorset, South (Viscount Hinchingbrooke) would agree with me—between hereditary titles and the hereditary right to a seat in the Legislature. I am not unduly concerned with hereditary titles, although I think that it is a little difficult to justify them, but I cannot see any justification for the hereditary right to a seat in any part of the Legislature. My view is that I would abolish that altogether.
However, assuming that this is not to happen, assuming that there is to be some compromise that there is to be some limited reform, then the Select Committee will have to decide whether renunciation is to be permanent or for life or for a less period. I would rule out at once a less period. I do not see how one can allow any individual to stand for membership of this House for a limited period of years, retaining the right to return to the other House when he so wishes. That is really out of the question. The choice is between renunciation permanently or for life. In other words, the choice is between renunciation for oneself alone, and renunciation for oneself and one's heirs.
I start with the assumption that no one should have the right to a place in the House of Lords by birth. But, putting that on one side, I think that one has to ask whether any particular family should have the right to move from one House to the other generation by generation. I do not think that that right should be granted, and it is for that reason that I come down on the side of permanent renunciation. Here, I am only expressing my personal opinion and no doubt this will have to be considered by the Select Committee.
I now turn to the effects and consequences, because I do not think that we should be facing this subject realistically if we did not give some thought to the effects and consequences of a number of Members of the other place choosing to sit in this House or to stand for election and give up their seats in the House of Lords. This raises a


very difficult and practical question of manning the House of Lords. I know that some would say that the solution is to abolish the other place.
I found amongst some of the papers of my late father a photograph taken in 1911. It depicts a motor car which, if it had been kept till today, would be quite a valuable possession. On one side is Sir Hastings Duncan, who was re-elected Liberal Member for the Otley Division of Yorkshire. On the other side is my father. On the bonnet of the car is a mascot which I think is intended to be a caricature of a Member of the House of Lords, and over it is a slogan, "End 'em—not referendum." There was another slogan at that time. "End 'em, not mend 'em."
When one recollects how obstructive the House of Lords was at that time, when one thinks of the important social legislation that was held up, I think that that attitude towards the House of Lords was quite understandable.

Mr. A. R. Wise: The country supported the Lords at the subsequent General Election.

Mr. Wade: No. However, much has happened since then and it is not now quite the same live issue. The powers of the House of Lords have been greatly curtailed. I think that there is a case for some form of Second Chamber. If this right of renunciation is granted. I think that something must be done to ensure that the work is carried on satisfactorily.
I do not intend to deride those who devote a lot of time to work in the House of Lords. That would be rather too like a parson who devotes his sermon to chiding his congregation for the failings of those who do not attend church. But if we are to have a Second Chamber we must ensure that it is capable of functioning satisfactorily, and if there is to be this right of choice for heirs to a peerage and for those who already sit in the House of Lords to renounce their peerage and to stand for election to the House of Commons, some thought must be given to replacing them. We shall then have to judge between election or appointment.
When this major issue was under discussion some years ago my party was

prepared to agree to a compromise based on the principles which were agreed between the three parties in 1948. If I may, I will refer to them briefly, because they have a bearing on the Motion. I will pick out three which are important. The first is that the Second Chamber should be complementary to and not a rival to the Lower House; secondly, that Members of the Second Chamber should be styled "Lords of Parliament" and should be appointed on the ground of personal distinction or public service; and, thirdly, that peers who are not Lords of Parliament should be entitled to stand for election to the House of Commons and also to vote at elections in the same manner as other citizens. We were prepared to abide by that as a compromise solution and it implies appointment and not election.
I am not very happy with the way in which the Life Peerages Act has worked out. I do not think that it has operated in accordance with the intentions expressed at the time that the Bill was passing through the House. I do not think that it has created that better balance that was intended.
I was in the Gallery of the House of Lords recently, watching a ceremony when a distinguished person took his seat. The Leader of the House was there at the same time and I am sure that he will recollect the occasion. I will not describe the very interesting pageantry. That has been done by others. I noticed how strikingly one-sided and unbalanced the House was. I thought it fortunate that I had no one with me from overseas or the Commonwealth. If I had had I should have found it very difficult to explain how the other place was part of our democratic Parliamentary system.
I was so struck by this lack of balance that I asked for some statistics as to how the Life Peerages Act worked. Has it really done much to achieve a greater balance? I found that the answer was as follows. The appointments that have been made are: Conservatives 10; cross-benchers 9, of whom several are supporters of the Government; Labour 16; Liberals 0. I do not think one could say that that fairly reflects, or even roughly reflects, the political alignment in the country, and I do not think that it does much to redress the imbalance in the House of Lords.
I am mentioning this because we are concerned with the Legislature. As long as there is a House of Lords it is part of the Legislature. I agree that we must see that this matter is kept in the right perspective. It is not a burning issue in the country at present. But the operation of the Life Peerages Act has not passed unnoticed by those genuinely concerned with the evolution of our Parliamentary system, and if the power of appointment is to be retained and if it is to be used, and I think that will have to be used more than in the past if there is to be this right of renunciation—

Mr. Christopher Chataway: Is there really not an imbalance to be redressed against the Liberal Party still in the House of Lords? Are there not an enormous number of Liberals still alive, and this being so, would they not come last in the list for the creation of life peerages?

Mr. Wade: That is not so at all. I could, if he wishes, give the hon. Gentleman facts and figures. The simple reason is that with the passage of time Members of both Houses, and this affects the other House in particular, become older. I think that there are five or six, or perhaps eight or ten, able to attend regularly, which number, I think the hon. Gentleman would agree, is not sufficient to carry on the duties of a Second Chamber.

Dr. Alan Glyn: Is the hon. Gentleman's only objection to the life peerage system per se that, according to him, his party has not its fair share?

Mr. Wade: That would be a matter for objection, but I think that it is far more serious than that.
One has to consider, if there are to be replacements, whether that is to be done by election or by appointment. If it is to be by appointment, then whoever is responsible must exercise very great care and a sense of equity. That is the point I am making. Otherwise, sooner or later, the country will say, "We will abolish the whole thing." People will demand either an elected system or no Second Chamber at all.
I think that there are some advantages in having a Second Chamber. I can see the difficulties about election for

the reason that the House of Lords might, in time, claim equal power with the House of Commons. I see that objection to election. But if it is to be by appointment it must be done with very great care. I do not object to the setting up of the Select Committee. I hope that it will lead to a removal of the anomaly which was shown up so clearly in the Wedgwood Benn case, but I also hope that in the course of its deliberations it will be entitled to consider some of these wider matters to which I have referred.

5.36 p.m.

Mr. F. M. Bennett: I am sure that my right hon. Friend will have taken note of the implied request of the hon. Member for Huddersfield, West (Mr. Wade) for further Liberal inclusions in future lists of life peerages, which the hon. Gentleman took the opportunity to stress. I would warn him, however, perhaps a little light-heartedly, that if adopted this would not guard against what has happened in the Upper House, and that is that the sons of former Liberal peers have in time seen the light and become members of the Conservative Party. He would have to address his mind to what kind of constitutional devices would prevent that.

Mr. Wade: Would the hon. Gentleman agree that that is one of the possible objections to the hereditary principle and the right to sit in the House of Lords merely by virtue of birth?

Mr. Bennett: I must say that it is a novel objection that a method which allows sons of Liberal peers to forsake their father's original political allegiances should be a ground for constitutional repeal.
The Leader of the Opposition spoke with some force of the need to keep the issues narrow in this matter in order to prevent undue delay in coming to a conclusion. I think that that is a very pertinent consideration today because judging from the speeches, all of which I have listened to, and the many more which doubtless will be made, it seems that there will be a great many problems to be considered. The thought that a Committee of this sort could consider all these points and reach a rapid conclusion even within its terms of reference


seems to me highly unlikely even though it should sit for longer sessions than any other committee has ever sat.
Since I came here a few years ago I have discovered among my colleagues and in myself that, though we all have doubts about our abilities in certain directions, we all think that we would make the best Foreign Secretaries, and also that our own individual scheme for reforming the House of Lords is best. I do not think there are more experts in any other field. Like other hon. Members, I too have my own reflections on this point.
So, because there are so many considerations before us, it seems to me that the Leader of the House and the Leader of the Opposition have agreed on the wisest course. Indeed, I cannot think of any other method than that a Joint Committee of both Houses could deal with these problems.
Certainly it is quite clear that my right hon. Friend could not hope to deal with each and every point raised in the course of a debate lasting only half a day, let alone one lasting several days. I suppose that all hon. Members have their own ideas about what they wish to be borne in mind as the overriding principle in this matter. I say at once that mine is the need to maintain a strong and effective Second Chamber. I do not want anything to be done to weaken or damage the chances of maintaining and improving a strong and effective Second Chamber in this country. All over the world, we are witnessing too great a concentration of executive power at the centre and one democracy after another is disappearing. The lesson from all this is that need for checks and balances is greater than ever before in the modern world. I have recently spent a good deal of time at Lancaster House advising one of the parties to the Kenya Conference, and have learned there that Her Majesty's Government, whatever we may think about them ourselves, are spending quite a lot of time in suggesting to overseas territories that they should have Second Chambers precisely to prevent a drift towards the over-centralisation of power. It would be a paradox if we now in this country did something to weaken the force of the lesson we are trying to bring home to others.
This very factor, oddly enough, is one which should surely cause us to look favourably at the desire for the change which is clearly envisaged in the setting up of this Select Committee. For I do not believe that it enhances the dignity, status or respect in which the Upper House is held that we should by some sort of dragooning try to keep people in it. It should be a place to which people aspire to go because of the job which they can do there, not a place to which they should be driven or which they should be prevented from leaving. Although I have no right whatever to speak for them, I imagine that the Members of the other place would find something a little distasteful in a system which implies that some of their Members dearly wanted to be somewhere else. It seems to me, therefore, that the corollary, if we do not want a system which prevents someone from leaving the other House, must be that we ought not to have a system which in due course prevents him from coming to this House. The two things hang together.
Much has been said about the extent to which we ought to go in our consideration of the problem, whether we should keep the issues narrow or think in terms of composition and powers over a wide range. It has been made clear that at this stage there is no basis for agreement between the parties which would go very far beyond what has been agreed in the House today. Therefore, I suppose, the question is to some extent academic. I am one of those who believe that in these constitutional matters it is essential to carry with one a good deal more than just the Government side if one wishes to enter upon extensive constitutional change. However, even though in this instance the question may be academic, I hope that it is understood that there are some of us at least who see strong arguments for going a good deal further in the future rather than always dealing with the matter piecemeal as each issue arises.
There are, I know, good arguments for leaving the structure as it is on the ground that it is British and that it works well, however illogical it may be. But there are those in our midst—on the benches opposite—who, I am convinced, want to leave the House of Lords without any substantial measure of reform because they do not want a second


Chamber to have any greater powers and, so long as they can keep it in some sort of anachronistic form, they have a good argument for preventing any further redistribution of powers between the two Houses. This is a factor which we ought to bear in mind in deciding, if not now then in the future, whether we ought to tackle not only isolated issues as they crop up but the wider question of the composition of the other House generally and, at the same time, talk about powers. There should be a quid pro quo from the Opposition in this. If we are again and again to meet the point of view that the other House should be made more democratic and structurally more acceptable in modern times, powers also should be reviewed and revised at the same time.
Since 1911, all the movement has been on one side. There has been a reduction in the power of the House of Lords to delay legislation, and there have been successive changes up to the present day. At the same time, there has been a considerable measure of modernisation or democratic change in the Upper House, and today yet another change is envisaged. Although no one has yet mentioned it today, there was the scheme introduced by Lord Salisbury a little time ago by which a large number of peers voluntarily said that they would not attend the House or exercise their functions. The hereditary element in the Upper House has been reduced considerably. Secondly, and much more important, there has been the appointment of life peers in which the Government and the Opposition have consulted one another. Presumably, this is a precedent which will be accepted for the future.
If we think always in electoral terms, it may be said that appointment is not strictly democratic. However, provided that Government and Opposition are reasonable and play the game in using the power of appointment, it will almost amount to indirect election by this House to the Upper House in order to keep it more nearly in line with the way political thinking is going in the country. It is noticeable that overseas there are countries which would be deeply offended if they were told that they were less democratic in their practice than we are. Canada, for instance, has an Upper House which is filled wholly by appointment. The system is much less demo-

cratic than ours in the sense that the Government of the day here can always, if necessary, appoint sufficient peers to redress the balance, whereas in Canada the Senate has a ceiling figure, a maximum of 102 Senators, beyond which no more can be appointed, with the result that, once a Government have appointed the Senators, there is no possible means by which the constitution of the Senate can be changed except by death. Yet no one in Canada would readily suggest that Canadian ideas on these matters are more reactionary than ours.
In looking at the matter for the future, we should not be blinded, I suggest, by a consideration only of the electoral principle. We should consider seriously the advantages of a wider extension of the appointment system, with due regard to the various parties and the feelings in the country.
I began by saying that each of us, no doubt, had his hobby horse to ride and his views about what should be accomplished within this narrow compass. I was greatly attracted by what my noble Friend the Member for Dorset, South (Viscount Hinchingbrooke) said. I wish I could believe that the matter was as simple as he suggested. He always speaks with great charm and force, and I found myself almost believing at one stage that, perhaps, there was no need for a Committee and that a one-Clause Bill could solve the problem for us. However, in view of all that has been said by hon. Members on both sides, I feel that the matter is not as simple as that.
Since everyone has staked his claim to one particular aspect of the matter in which he is interested, I shall content myself with saying that I do not much like the word "renunciation" in regard to the possible surrender of peerages. Since we have in this country long traditions, I feel that we ought to be guided so far as possible by precedent. There are plenty of precedents for us in an even loftier sphere, in the monarchy. I suggest that we should look at the matter by analogy with abdication. A monarch who abdicates loses his own rights permanently and his heir at the time takes over at once. This seems to me to some extent to strike the middle of the road between those who say that it is a pity that a peerage should be given up by a


family once and for all and those who claim that renunciation should be for life, the peerage being held in abeyance. In my view, when a man reaches the age of 21, or when he inherits the peerage, he should then be in a position to abdicate if he wishes, and the peerage could forthwith pass to the next in line. It is certainly insupportable to most hon. Members that an hon. Member could play Box and Cox regarding his going from one House to the other, but I suggest that, whatever system we adopt, we must think of a very curious paradox which, so far as I know, cannot be met by any of the plans put forward or mooted here or elsewhere.
Let us assume that a peer, by one method or another, ceases to have the right to sit in the Upper House and, instead, comes here. What will we do if, at a later stage, he decides, as so many hon. Members opposite do, that after a youth of fiery observations against the Upper House he, in his turn, would like to start his own new line and go to the House of Lords? This is another of those matters which it seems will have to be considered by the Committee.
So it is that the speeches I have heard so far—and my own remarks—convince me that in setting up this Committee, however reluctant one may be to mess about piecemeal with the other place, we have probably done all we can at this stage, and I cannot see any other method by which we can make progress on a subject on which there seems such a limited degree of agreement.

5.52 p.m.

Miss Jennie Lee: I am sorry that later tonight I shall not be given an opportunity of voting against the terms of the Motion. Fair from considering these terms of reference narrow, I consider them dangerously wide. I would have been delighted to have supported a Motion and to have voted for a Bill which said, quite simply, that if any peers or peeresses wished to renounce their title they would be free to do so, but, having renounced it, that would be a permanent renunciation and would not take place in a hide-and-seek fashion whereby a future generation could once more resume the title.
Since we are told that the starting point for today's debate has been Mr. Wedgwood Benn's dilemma, why could we not have had a Motion, or be considering a Bill, which would have dealt, as we all agree, not with Mr. Benn's position alone, but with all peers and peeresses with the same problem? I am broadminded enough even to include any life peers and peeresses who may have seen the folly of their ways. When I say that I would have preferred a Motion in those terms, I know perfectly well that it might mean for the Conservative Party in this House a considerable refreshment. The duller and older peers would never dream of renouncing their peerages, but quite a few up and coming young men and women might prefer to come into this House. A few sociological sports among them might come to this side, but the majority would land on the benches opposite.
Electorally, hon. Members opposite are in need of a few shots in the arm. I do not begrudge them that stimulant. I most certainly would not grudge them any advantage in the personnel of candidates who would come their way from the sort of proposition I have made. But we are dealing not only with the matter which, we all agree, started this discussion and which was so excellently put by my new hon. Friend the Member for Lincoln (Mr. Taverne), that is, that the time came when Catholics, Jews and rationalists were freed from their constitutional disabilities. Now peers and peeresses should be liberated. After all, they did not choose their fathers and mothers. It was not a deliberate act on their part but an accident of birth, so we should welcome them, if they win their way into this House, and allow them to play their full part in the Government of this country; assuming, of course, that they agree to renounce their peerages for all time.
We are not today discussing a Motion of that kind. The Motion before us is asking
… what changes should be made in the rights of Peers of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain or of the United Kingdom, and of Peeresses in their own right …".
Time and again in this debate we have heard references to the elective system. I have a great respect for Lord Salisbury and I know how hard and consistently he has worked through the years for


the principles in which he believes. He believes passionately in the House of Lords. He wants to protect it and prepare for the future enlargement of its powers by grooming it in such a way that the most obvious absurdities of its present composition are removed.
We have been told that the Committee to be set up would not deal with the powers or composition of the Upper House. I beg to differ. If we accept the Motion, then most certainly its composition will be discussed. Of course, the Committee will look into the position of the English, Irish and Scottish peers. No doubt it will discuss what has been so often discussed before; that an hon. Member should go to another place but that those who are not selected—by peers, remember, and not by the ordinary electorate of Great Britain—should be free to stand for the House of Commons.
This can all be discussed under the terms of reference we axe proposing to give to this Committee. I do not know why the Leader of the House, in his opening remarks, discussed the possibility of a Government hon. Member of the House of Lords coming to address us in this House. What was he doing? Was he kite-flying or giving a sop to some of the hon. Members behind him who would very much like to see that kind of arrangement? I hope that the reactions of some of my hon. Friends, tepid though they may be in these matters, gave sufficient light to convince the Leader of the House that that dog, at least, will not run.
I have said that I have a great deal of respect for Lord Salisbury and that I understand what he is trying to do. I certainly understand what the Leader of the House was attempting when he said that we could not get all our own way but that the Motion represented at least a resonable advance. I must ask myself: "Reasonable advance" for whom? It is not a reasonable advance for me, and I repeat that I would like to support a Bill which would enable any peer or peeress to renounce his or her title and to stand for election to become hon. Members of this House.
But when they go to market hon. Members opposite have a more realistic sense of how to strike a bargain, I am sorry to say, than some of my hon. Friends.

Mr. Nabarro: Oh no.

Miss Lee: Of course, being a good trader, the hon. Member would always say "No". He would never admit that he had got a bargain. What has in fact happened is that instead of opposing the quite unnecessary additions that appear in the Motion we are, as an official Opposition, supporting them. I think that the Government are exacting too high a price for carrying out a constitutional change which reasonable people in all parties agree is necessary.
What will follow? We shall have a situation not unlike that on the Life Peers Bill. At least on the Second Reading of that Bill we said officially that we were against it. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Newport (Sir F. Soskice), speaking officially for the Opposition, said that he regarded that Bill as one of evil presage. In spite of all my experience in this House, I remain a simpleton, because I still do not understand how one can vote against the Second Reading of a Bill like the Life Peerages Bill and denounce it in such wholehearted terms, which means that one is against the principle of the Bill, and then later co-operate in the appointment of life peers. I should have thought that if one opposed the principle and Second Reading of a Bill, one was saying, in effect, "If you go ahead with this Measure, you can do so, but do not pretend that you do so after agreement on all sides."
We are not making the stand tonight which we made on the Second Reading of that Bill. We are agreeing to this straightaway. What we could have done today was what I have said we should have done, namely, deal specifically with the issues raised by people in the position of Anthony Wedgwood Benn, whatever may be their party. Instead of that, we are giving moral support to the Government's proposal to set up a committee of inquiry which will now go into the question of whether we can trim down the membership of the House of Lords and make it appear to be a little more rational. Before we know where we are, we shall find that the Conservatives hedged forward just a little in their defence of the House of Lords.
I have more reason to despair than the noble Lord the Member for Dorset, South (Viscount Hinchingbrooke). He was


grieved because too many concessions were being made. I wish to cheer him up—although I may be doing it in an oblique fashion—because I assure him that the concessions are being made from this side of the House. Just how far they are carried is a matter of power politics. If there should, by a miracle, be a reinvigoration of the Conservative Party at and following the next General Election—whoopee! Its members have terms of reference here to bring forward all sorts of recommendations running completely counter to what a modern democracy should be seeking to achieve.
I want to be exempted from wishing to be personally offensive when I say that, whatever may be our views of ourselves as individuals—we may be humble or we may be arrogant—collectively the British people are finding us a bore. They are not taking much interest in the House of Commons. No longer do the conflicts take place on the Floor of the House of Commons. The people are bored with the secret society atmosphere which is being generated. I consider it an insult to a modern electorate that they should not hear on the Floor of the House not only the conclusions reached by the different parties but the arguments which have led to those conclusions. That is why I make no apology for voicing a minority point of view.
There are those who regard the House of Lords as a tame old pussy cat, settling down cosily at the other end of the Palace of Westminster. I would not call it exactly a tiger, but it is strong and powerful. The balance between the two Houses is influenced by the successive steps we take. It is no good saying that we are discussing a small matter. Anyone with a sense of history considering a matter which can alter the balance of power between the two Houses has to think not only of yesterday but of a hundred years ago, and not only of tomorrow but of a hundred years hence.
One of the most distinguished Socialist teachers, the late Mr. Tawney, said that the Labour Government of 1929–31 collapsed not because it was too arrogant in its Socialism or too thrusting but because it retreated. He said, in retrospect, "You can peel an onion leaf by leaf, but you cannot fight a tiger claw by claw". Hon. Members opposite can reform the House

of Lords claw by claw, but I do not think that we on this side of the House of Commons can reduce the powers of the House of Lords any further in that fashion. Whether it is an old tabby cat or whether it becomes a jungle beast with a taste for blood depends on how power politics develop in the future.
One hon. Member opposite said what a mistake it was that the House of Lords did not stand up to Labour Government after the 1945 General Election. He wondered why it did not oppose Socialist Measures. There is only one reason why the House of Lords does not oppose Socialist Measures and that is if it thinks it will not get away with it. If I may seem to pour a little iodine into the wounds of my own party, I do it to heal and cleanse, not to destroy. What we are working for is a vigorous Socialist Government. That, we know, will meet sharp opposition from the House of Lords. As a democratic and elected Chamber, we should not be at the caprice of a non-elected Chamber. It is bad enough for a back bench hon. Member in the House of Lords to presume to legislate, to vote and to govern the country, but it is worse for any Government member who has not been elected by the people and who has not had to go before the people of the country to have his right renewed to represent others.
I take the strongest possible exception to the practice of having either life peers or hereditary peers interfering in government. They can change their party, even their sex, these days. That may sound a little odd, but strange things happen in this modern world. Certainly quite a few of them have changed their party. They may be old or young, sick or well, effective or ineffective, but, whether life peers or hereditary peers, once in the Lords we have absolutely no power to remove them.
I am, therefore, very sorry that we on this side have not been more purposive and clear-cut today and have not insisted that if we want an agreed Measure it should be on the genuine narrower field of agreement that anyone in the Upper House, or anyone under threat of being sent to the Upper House who has the right sense of values and prefers to join the Commons, should be enabled to do so and warmly welcomed.

6.9 p.m.

Mr. Gerald Nabarro: I am always pleased to be engaged in controversy with the hon. Lady the Member for Cannock (Miss Lee) at general elections, on television, on the radio, on public platforms, or in the House of Commons. Today, I find myself largely in disagreement with what she has said. I could not understand why she said that she could not vote this evening. Of course, she can vote. She can be the first Teller and the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. M. Foot) can be the second. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman would jump at that opportunity with alacrity. Both he and the hon. Lady are abolitionists in the context of the House of Lords, judging by what they have said on past occasions.
I respect their views, but I do not think that the majority of the House of Commons are abolitionists. I believe that the great majority of Members of the House of Commons believe in a Second and revising Chamber of one kind or another.
Because we have an institution upstairs which serves some useful purposes and has functioned tolerably satisfactorily for several centuries, it would be a bad mistake to try to dispense altogether with its services.
For my part, I want to see the House of Lords reformed. I confess at once that although in many matters I find myself far out on the Right wing of the Conservative Party, this is an issue on which I am well to the left of the centre of my party and much closer to the thoughts of many Members of the Opposition, as I made perfectly clear on 13th April, 1961, when winding up my speech with these words:
I represent the young and progressive element m the Conservative Party.
[Laughter.] I am sorry to note the derision of my noble Friend the Member for Dorset, South (Viscount Hinchingbrooke).
I believe the Amendment set down today on the Order Paper by the Leader of the Opposition is the closest to my own desires in this matter. I shall, therefore, vote for that Amendment in the Lobby tonight and urge the other Members of the younger and progressive element in the Conservative Party to vote with me."—OFFICIAL REPORT, 13th April, 1961; Vol. 638, c. 603.]

My hon. Friends who voted with me on that occasion are strewn around the benches tonight. I am not ashamed to be with them here, or ashamed at the position in which I find myself today, because I have done about ten years' work on this problem.
Although I readily concede to the hon. Lady the Member for Cannock that the Wedgwood Benn case may have sparked matters off in the last couple of years, it certainly gave me in the Conservative Party the right peg on which to hang my hat, and I hung it there. I tried to bring pressure to bear upon my right hon. Friends, including the former Leader of the House, who is now Home Secretary, and the present Leader of the House. After the business statement on Thursday afternoons, I have asked on countless occasions when this Motion or the previous one of the last Session, would be brought to the House for debate so that we could get a Committee with the highest common factor of agreement between the two principal parties in this House as to the bounddaries of the measure of Lords reform which we thought it desirable to achieve.
In supporting the Motion today, I define again exactly what are my own boundaries. I believe that they are the boundaries of quite a number of my hon. Friends, who, of course, may speak for themselves. On 13th April last year, I said that
I wanted three simple reforms. They were all of substantial moment, but simple in character.
The first was that a peer of the realm should have a vote at parliamentary elections. The second was that a peer of the realm might offer himself for election to the Commons House of Parliament. The third was that in the event of his election to the Commons House of Parliament he should renounce his peerage for himself, his successors and heirs. In other words, that peerage should be extinguished."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 13th April, 1961; Vol. 638, c. 596.]
Many of my hon. Friends have commented on a proposition of that kind. They have used as an argument against it that, having regard to our long-established traditions and the definition of a peerage and its origins, it is wrong that we should be as drastic and arbitrary as to make a decision of that sort. Others have felt, as I feel, that it would be wholly wrong to engage in a game of shuttling between the other House and


this House, even Parliament by Parliament, even generation by generation or otherwise.
I am sorry to say to my noble Friend the Member for Dorset, South that I largely disagree with his solution in this matter. I do not consider the over-simplified version that he put to the House today logical or tenable. If an adult citizen—and a peer is an adult citizen—takes the view that he should submit himself as a public duty to the hazards, and the arduous tasks, of facing the electorate at a General Election, and if he succeeds in becoming elected to the Commons, he should be prepared to give up all privileges of a hereditary character for himself and his successors in another place.
To listen to some of the speeches today, one would assume that it was an easy matter to be elected to the House of Commons. Of course, if one is fortunate, like the newly-elected hon. Member for Pontefract (Mr. Harper), it is easy, but very few of us are. The overwhelming majority of us have done it the hard way, which means one, two or three General Elections before election and many years of hard work. I shall not relate my own history in this context—I am much too modest to do that—but the great majority of us have been through the fire to Teach this Legislature.
If a peer of the realm really feels such an urge as to wish to go through an arduous routine of that character and secures a majority at a Parliamentary election—it is purely optional that he does so—by all means let him come here, but he must, in my view, give up in perpetuity any privilege of an hereditary character to sit in another place.

Viscount Hinchingbrooke: Does my hon. Friend mean that whereas it is open to every Member of this House to accept a life peerage or a hereditary peerage, if and when offered, this privilege is not to be accorded to somebody who has previously been a peer and renounced his peerage in order to sit in this House?

Mr. Nabarro: I suppose that that is a contingency which might happen, but I cannot imagine that a Member of this House, kicked upstairs, with either an hereditary peerage or a life peerage, would, after a few months or years there,

decide that he did not like their Lordships and that he would again offer himself for re-election to the Commons. It might happen, but not very often. It might happen once in a century—and hard cases make bad law.

Mr. C. Pannell: The hon. Member said something in a parenthesis which betrays a rather bad thing in this House. Last week, the Minister for Aviation attacked the hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Lubbock) before the hon. Member had made his maiden speech. My hon. Friend the Member for Pontefract (Mr. Harper) has not yet made his maiden speech. I am taking up the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Pontefract came in the easy way. Any man who comes straight from the coal face, with the esteem of his fellows, does not come the easy way.

Mr. Nabarro: I am sorry, my words were misinterpreted. I apologise unreservedly to the hon. Member for Pontefract. When I said that he came here the easy way, I did not mean that coal mining was the easy way. I meant that he happens to be fortunate enough, in his first run for Parliament, to have offered himself in a constituency where there is an impregnable Labour majority. There are, of course, Tory seats in the same position. [HON. MEMBERS: "Orpington."] I am sure that I have not offended the hon. Member for Pontefract, because I did not mean it in an electoral sense.
My noble Friend the Member for Dorset, South—I congratulate him on his reference—quoted the late Lord Curzon before he was ennobled. The words that he then used were:
Incompatibility of double service as a reason for debarring a peer for sitting in the Commons.
That, however, was not the reason given by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary when he was Leader of the House. The reason he gave was the reason related again today by the hon. Gentleman the Member for Lincoln (Mr. Taverne), and which I used in my last speech on this subject of 13th April, 1961. I am sorry to be tedious about it. It was the reason given, and derived from a judgment of Mr. Justice Dodridge in 1626, that a peerage
is a personal dignity annexed to the posterity and fixed in the blood.


That is the most unutterable drivel that I have ever been privileged to read in the context of 1962. While I have the greatest admiration for my noble Friend the Member for Dorset, South, I do not recognise any difference between his blood and mine.

Viscount Hinchingbrooke: Nor do I.

Mr. Nabarro: My noble Friend has given me at once the most perfect answer. He has said there is no difference in the blood. He is a peer.

Viscount Hinchingbrooke: I am not.

Mr. Nabarro: Then I am sorry to have referred to him as my noble Friend. He is an heir to a peerage, and unless we change the law he will become a peer, and from the moment he becomes a peer then his style, rank, title, and dignity rest upon the words which I have just quoted, and repeated in the speech of the hon. Member for Lincoln. When he does become a peer I do not recognise any difference between his blood and mine.
I am not eroding the hereditary system by saying this. I am not eroding the power of the House of Lords by referring to it. My hon. Friends have come to me and said, "It is a very dangerous thing, Gerald, to play the game you are playing in the House of Commons over Lords reform. Just think of what will happen in the Upper House if all the good chaps, all the good Tory peers, can offer themselves before Tory constituency selection committees and thereby squeeze out genuine commoners and democrats like yourself." Really, does anybody seriously believe that a peer of the realm will go to Kidderminster and squeeze me out?

Mr. John Strachey: Easily.

Mr. Nabarro: The right hon. Gentleman say, "Easily". Really! Suppose we did accept the three principles which I mentioned earlier in my speech, and which are now enshrined in a different form of words, different terminology certainly, but having the same meaning in the Motion. Suppose we did subsequently legislate in that sense. Does anybody seriously believe, as my hon. Friend the Member for Windsor (Sir C. Mott-Radclyffe) hinted, though he did

not say it very precisely, that by doing so nobody would be left in the House of Lords of talent, ability or competence? That is what my hon. Friend suggested. I say to my hon. Friend with the greatest kindness and respect to him that it is nonsense.
There are 932 peers of the realm who are eligible to sit in the Upper House. I suppose that, at the very outside, if we gave them the opportunity of offering themselves for election to the Commons House of Parliament, just half a dozen at each General Election might offer themselves. Perhaps a dozen; something between half a dozen and a dozen; and if three-quarters of them were elected and we had nine former peers at a maximum sitting here in the House of Commons, would that really undermine the vitality and the strength of the House of Lords? I doubt it.
What I am very concerned with is—and this leads me on to a major point—I do not want this to be regarded as only one-way traffic. I do not want my noble Friend alone to be ennobled and to sit here as the Member for Dorset, South. There are others, my noble Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Viscount Lambton), my noble Friend the Member for Hertford (Lord Balniel), my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford (Mr. Woodhouse), and others. Certainly I want them kept here if they wish to stay here at the propitious moment, but I also want peers of the realm seated in the House of Lords now, if we pass legislation in the sense denoted by this Motion, to be able to offer themselves for election to the House of Commons. It would be a very good thing. Perhaps, if we had here Lord Hailsham, Minister for Science, it would be a good thing.
My right hon. Friends on the Treasury Bench have never mentioned this point. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House did not mention it. I think that it was an omission.

Mr. C. Pannell: They forgot it.

Mr. Nabarro: No. I do not think my right hon. Friends are in any way reticent in matters of that sort.
There is much talent in the House of Lords and if a few peers are elected to sit in the House of Commons I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Prime


Minister will kick a few commoners upstairs to redress the balance, and maintain the talent, ability and competence of the House of Lords. It will be a two-way traffic, as I understand it, and those are important considerations. Indeed, it is a perfectly reasonable suggestion that there should be a two-way traffic.

Mr. Mitchison: I wonder whether I may help the hon. Member for a moment. I do not want to take away any pleasure he may have in feeling mildly mutinous, but I noticed on 8th May, 1961, the Home Secretary said:
I can tell Mr. Clark"—
a journalist who had written on this matter—
that nobody would have been happier than we would to have had Lord Hailsham with us in the House at the present time."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 8th May, 1961; Vol. 640, c. 42.]
I am not quite sure who the other person, the other party to the "we", was. I took it to represent the Government. It may, of course, have been the hon. Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro).

Mr. Nabarro: Of course it was me. I must protest again about the really grave deficiencies in the hon. and learned Gentleman's conduct in this House. He rarely or never does his homework. Had he done his homework, and read my speech of 13th April, 1961, he would have seen I supported the views there expressed by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary.
I want to ask the Attorney-General, when he replies, to satisfy me on a number of points about this Committee. We are to have a Committee of all parties in this House, and of peers and commoners, and it is to be on the broadest possible basis. I hope that in selecting the Conservative Members of the House of Commons who are to sit on this Committee my right hon. Friend will be very careful not to include only those Members among my hon. Friends who are known to be diehard Tories and averse and hostile to Lords reform. In other words, I hope that he will not load the Committee.
Secondly, I hope that he will not put on the Committee only Conservative representatives who are Privy Councillors. I should be very cross with him if

he did that. Thirdly, I hope that he will close his mind to placing on this Committee fuddy-duddy elements in the Conservative Party.

Mr. Michael Foot: Who will be left?

Mr. Nabarro: Quite a lot will be left. I hope that the views of my hon. Friends and myself, who have worked very hard over a long period for a Motion of this kind, will be fully heard, and, I may say, much in the interests of keeping in this House my noble Friend the member for Dorset, South, my noble Friend the Member for Hertford and many more like them. I hope that our voices will be heard and that our labours over the years to secure the desirable end enshrined in this Motion will be rewarded by proper appreciation in the composition of this important constitutional Committee.

6.29 p.m.

Mr. Charles Pannell: The hon. Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro) who made speeches last year, to which he has referred, suggesting that he was going down to the Bristol by-election, did not, in fact, go to the Bristol by-election. We tend to think now that he has been consistent in all that he has said about this sort of thing. We welcome his help, but it was certainly not 100 per cent.

Mr. Nabarro: I made publicly known the reason why I did not go to the Bristol by-election. It was because I was assured by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, then the Leader of the House, that this Committee was to be established. I told Mr. Wedgwood Benn. He said at once that in those circumstances it would not be desirable for me to go to support him at the Bristol by-election. That is why I did not go.

Mr. Pannell: The hon. Member has not done his homework. That was not the reason at all. The fact was that the Committee which was proposed to be set up by the Home Secretary is not the Committee we are going to have today. It was a Committee with wider terms of reference which the Opposition would not have been prepared to accept. Certainly I would not have accepted those terms. This is part of the answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock (Miss Lee). It


is a fact that we have restricted the terms of reference. It may be remembered that the existing terms of reference, as laid down by the present Home Secretary, were that the Committee was to be concerned with the composition, and we said that we could not consider composition. It was to consider the payment of peers and we said that we would not consider that without considering the payment of hon. Members. It was also to consider renunciation. Our party knew what it was doing about it. The present terms of reference are in effect, the terms for which we stuck out.
Whatever comes out of this Committee must indicate some affront to the hereditary principle. In forty years in politics there is no subject on which I have ever felt more strongly. And there are other people who will say that my support has been consistent and continuous and has not been limited to speaking in the House. There is no point in making attacks on the Opposition Front Bench because we have agreed on the terms of reference. Whatever comes from the Committee the House will not be bound by it. The House will be completely free to take any action it desires. I hold the view that the only thing that would come out of this properly would be when some Government of our complexion is armed with power. For example, life peers came out of direct Government action without a Committee. It might well be that if we placed the matter before the country it might lead to some action.
It has been said that Parliament and democracy are increasingly being found to be boring, but that only happens when we in this House put up with what we did yesterday when everybody wanted to discuss the salaries of nurses and the Public Gallery was full of nurses from all over the country and the debate was held up by the Left-wing on fifth-rate points of order. Parliament is found to be a bore when we should be discussing things which go deep into the very being of our people and our procedures do not keep up with them. I find that when the Left wing lends itself to that sort of thing it suffers. Throughout the night the fight was kept up for the nurses and

nobody will find much about it in the papers today. I hear that the same sort of company waited at Transport House this morning and there was a degree of brawling directed against the Leader of the Opposition and the Deputy Leader. Why did they not take it across the road to the Tory Central Office and direct it against Quintin Hogg?

Mr. Michael Foot: Why was the hon. Member not here last night to join those who fought for the nurses?

Mr. Pannell: I am willing to bet anything on my reputation in fighting in the House for matters of social justice, and I do not talk about these subjects on television for fees. I do not necessarily question the motives or impute anything against my hon. Friend when he is not here.

Mr. M. Foot: I thank my hon. Friend very much.

Mr. Pannell: I want to deal particularly with a point raised by the noble Lord the Member for Dorset, South (Viscount Hinchingibrooke). I was interested in that because I suppose that I gave as much moral support to Mr. Wedgwood Bonn as anybody, at least by listening in the courts. This is the question of writ of summons. The noble Lord suggests that we could get over these things by that means. It is noteworthy that this was the peg on which Mr. Benn hung his case. That was what the argument was about. It was an attempt to put the issue as narrowly as we could. It was argued that as long as a man did not accept a writ of summons he was not a Member of the Upper House. All Mr. Benn's efforts worked towards that end. It was not concerned with the idea of ennoblement but with the fact that a man had a double duty and he could only accept one.
If we accept that as the argument and the solution of this problem, how does the noble Lord meet the point? In a hypothetical case, does a peer who refuses a writ of summons in order to serve in this House become entitled at the next election to say that he wants to go into the other House and to accept a writ of summons? Surely the refusal of a writ of summons must be a lifetime's refusal of a peerage, or more. I happen


to be of the same view as the Leader of the Opposition, that renunciation of a title should be for ever. That is what I should like, but in a rearguard action as a second-best I should be prepared to consider the question of life commoners.

Viscount Hinchingbrooke: I do not think, and I am sure that on reflection the House will agree, that any peer who refuses a writ of summons and thereby sits in the House of Commons should be singled out as an individual who cannot again be offered ennoblement. If that is done he is alone in this consideration, whereas the rest of the Members of the House of Commons are eligible for a life peerage or a hereditary peerage as the case might be.

Mr. Pannell: With respect, I do not think that the noble Lord has treated us with his customary frankness. If he will look at the issue he will see that a man still in the service of the House ought not to take a writ of summons. It means that he is over 21 and is more likely to be over 30. He has decided to opt out for a lifetime. Does the noble Lord suggest that he should at some convenient time be able to accept a peerage if offered?

Viscount Hinchingbrooke: He ought to be absolutely on all fours with other hon. Members who would be eligible at any time to take a life peerage or a hereditary peerage if one was offered.

Mr. Pannell: I presume that the noble Lord means a peerage of another creation. Then there is another writ of summons. It is reasonable that if a man once refuses a writ of summons he should refuse it for the rest of his life, otherwise this would give rise to the greatest possible amount of objection.
I do not agree with my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition when he says that he takes the view that a peer once he has gone to the Upper House could be brought back into this House. He seemed to think that there was some principle of freedom at stake there, but I do not think that that is a good idea at all. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison) appears to be shaking his head, but I understood clearly that that was what my right hon. Friend said on

this matter. Again, I would think that this would apply to anyone who had not accepted the writ of summons. This is not an issue concerning Mr. Wedgwood Benn, because, I believe, there are six or seven hon. Members opposite who might be disadvantaged in future.
It is no use trying to drag up, fifty years later, the proposals of 1908. Lord Rosebery had it in mind to bring "proconsuls", as he described them, into the service of the House of Lords, and people in the self-governing dominions. I suppose that today we should have to bring in people from local authorities, the trade unions and the shop stewards to make up a cross-section of our society. But I do not think that reviving the 1908 proposals is a runner.
Nor do I think that it was cowardice on the part of the House of Lords when it faced the facts of life in 1945. It was not, as the noble Lord the Member for Dorset, South suggested, that the soldiers voted to get out of the war. Most of them voted to come back to an order of society different from that which they knew before the war. One of the most moving things I can remember was when the right hon. Member for Woodford (Sir W. Churchill), who was then Prime Minister, and Mr. Ernest Bevin went to see the troops just before they left for Europe in 1944.
The men did not call out to the Prime Minister because, with great respect to him for what he did in the war, he had an awful record in peace. Instead, they called out to Mr. Bevin, "What are you going to bring us back to, Ernie? The dole?" That was the sort of thing that was uppermost in the minds of the troops. They voted accordingly and solidly in 1945. They merely looked upon nationalisation as a means to an end. We were to bring 20 per cent. of the economy under public ownership, and they knew that, without public ownership, it would be impossible to fashion a different sort of Britain to that of the 1930s. The noble Lord has not had the experience of being in an employment exchange queue, as I have, and of knowing the sort of things that moved men in those times.
There is no doubt about this matter. There is the story told of Lord Slim. The right hon. Member for Woodford asked him in 1945 how the men were voting. Lord Slim said that 90 per cent.
were voting Labour. When the right hon. Gentleman asked how the rest were voting, he was told that they were abstaining. I do not think that it was necessarily cowardice of the peers to bow to the facts of life in 1945. The House of Lords of that year was not quite the same as the House of Lords of 1911. Slow as it moves, it can move with the times to a limited extent.
I also reject, as a non-runner, the suggestion canvassed in The Times that we could somehow bring Ministers from the House of Lords to speak here in debates. One thing which this House will never accept is having men come here and addressing us without the formality of going before the electorate first. The obligation to consult the electorate and to be returned by it to this House is not something which can be brushed aside. It is no mere formality. If such hopes arise from ambiguity in drafting, then let those who support the idea get it out of their heads. However much their Lordships may raise this proposal in the Joint Committee, this is not something that the House of Commons will accept.
After hearing the hon. Member for Windsor (Sir C Mott-Radclyffe), I can understand Orpington. I went down to the Bristol, South-East by-election last year. The right hon. and learned Member for Chertsey (Sir L. Heald) was there speaking on the constitution. As my hon. Friend the Member for Lincoln (Mr. Taverne) reminded us, there was a landslide in that constituency, even more than in Orpington.
It is difficult for people of my age to understand young people, but I think that they are moved by social issues as much as they are moved by economic ones. They voted then for the idea that people should be honoured for the contribution they bring to society, and not for inherited wealth. Nor do they believe the nonsense about there being "something in the blood". I am surprised that anyone now gives credence to that nonsense of "something in the blood". That, after all, was the Hitlerian view. It is not only tribal—it smacks too much of the corporate State.
The first election which I remember was in 1906, when I was four years old. Sir John Simon was fighting Waltham-stow, where I was born. The election

was on the issue of Lords versus Commons. I can just remember the following election, in 1910. This is a subject on which I feel as deeply as does any hon. Member. This is just the sort of issue in which the people know that the case for the House of Lords does not match up to the needs of today. I am not concerned with what the hon. Member for Kidderminster said about the staffing of the Joint Committee. I hope that there will be enough corporate sense on that Committee to appreciate that we are in 1962, and that the settlement of the House of Lords is not something that this country will indefinitely delay.

6.45 p.m.

Mr. Humphry Berkeley: In common with almost everyone who has spoken, with the sole exception, I think, of the hon. Member for Cannock (Miss Lee), I warmly welcome this Motion. I do so because it has always seemed to me, since we first started debating this subject a year ago, that the position of the "reluctant peer", and particularly that of the "reluctant peer" who wishes to remain in this House and whose electors wish him, in overwhelming numbers, to remain, creates a situation which is increasingly absurd and ridiculous.
I applaud the change of attitude which has taken place on the part of the Government since these matters were first discussed. I think that the attitude they took a year ago, which was, broadly, one of not being able to interfere with the law as it stood, ran them into the very serious danger of making the vast majority of people feel that the House of Lords was ridiculous. Had they persisted in this attitude, I believe that it would have made the eventual abolition of the House of Lords inevitable.
The plain fact remains that we can only have a Second Chamber in this country if it is based upon principles of common sense. This has been the way in which our constitution has been successfully adapted throughout the centuries.
My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, on 13th April last year, said the Government's view was that they could not accept a breach in the hereditary system. But we all know that the


Government themselves made a substantial breach in that system when they created life peerages. I regard this change in attitude as most laudable. Most of us on this side of the House would, I think, like to see an element of the hereditary system retained in a Second Chamber, but, the breach in absolute heredity having been made, I think that many of us find it difficult to understand exactly why the Government took so rigid a line a year ago.
I would like my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General to help us on this question of how wide the terms of reference of the Government's Motion are. I feel that they are substantial wider than either the Leader of the House or the Leader of the Opposition maintain. This is the one point on which I agree with the hon. Member for Cannock. The Motion says that the Joint Committee should consider
… whether any … changes should be made in the rights of Peers … to sit in either House of Parliament …
Presumably, if that is the case, the Joint Committee could decide or recommend that only life peers, or a proportion of hereditary peers, should sit in the House of Lords. The terms of reference do not appear to apply solely to the question of renunciation. I hope that my right hon. and learned Friend will deal with that matter, because it is of great importance. I, not being a lawyer, would judge those terms to be fairly wide, and to include the question of composition if the Committee considered that to be relevant.
I would very much prefer that a wider interpretation could be placed on the terms of reference, since I agree with my noble Friend the Member for Dorset, South (Viscount Hinchingbrooke) that there are immense complications in the principle of renunciation. If renunciation is the only means by which we can get a sensible composition of the Upper Chamber, I am all for it, but if we can get a commonsense and acceptable composition without renunciation, I believe that we should try to do so.
One could argue for ever about whether the eleventh inheritor of a title really has the right to extinguish his peerage for good. One could argue that one should be able to renounce in one's

own lifetime and place the peerage in abeyance; or, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Torquay (Mr. F. M. Bennett), that one could execute an act of abdication and that the title should automatically go to the next in line. Those are all matters about which people might have feelings of varying degrees of intensity. As I say, if renunciation is the only way in which we can get agreement, I accept it, but if we can look at composition I think that it is worth considering.
I totally disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Torquay—and, I think, with one or two other hon. Members—in his view that if the Committee is allowed to look at composition it should also look at powers. It seems to me that we either accept a position in which we have one elected Chamber and a Second Chamber that is not elected—in which case there is very little ground for manœuvring over powers—or we have two elected Chambers—elected, perhaps, on roughly the same basis—in which case one might conceivably have some justification for substantially increasing the powers of the Upper House; but I do not think that anyone is suggesting that we should merely have in another place a replica of the House of Commons. I therefore do not think that any of us will get very far if we start talking in terms of altering the powers of the Upper House at present. Therefore, quite rightly, the whole question of powers has been excluded in relation to the Upper Chamber in the Motion.
Assuming that the Committee can look at composition, the whole question of renunciation could be made quite irrelevant if we were to accept, as my noble Friend suggested, the concept of an electoral college of hereditary peers electing a certain number of their members to represent them in the Upper House. It would not matter how many of them there were—once we had the principle of elected representative hereditary peers. Those who did not wish to offer themselves for election could automatically and quite simply become eligible for membership of this House.
When one discusses these matters one is frequently asked to produce precedents, and the precedent that I should like to suggest to the Government—and


to the Joint Committee when it is set up—is that of the Irish peerage. I cannot see why our present hereditary peerage could not be put on the same basis as the Irish peerage was when it operated to the full. All the hereditary Irish peers elected a proportion of their number for life to sit in the House of Lords.
For many years we had Lord Winterton in this House; in fact, he became the Father of the House. He was a peer—nobody denies that—but he was an Irish peer, and, therefore, had the option either to stand for election to the House of Lords by his fellow Irish peers or to stand for election to the House of Commons by the electors of Horsham. He chose the latter course, and had a most distinguished career in this House. I think that the precedent of the Irish peerage is an extremely valuable one, and one that could guide us to a successful conclusion in all our deliberations on this problem—

Captain John Litchfield: How would my hon. Friend get over the difficulty, which I can see in his plan, that a party majority in the other House would tend to elect 100 per cent. members of that party?

Mr. Berkeley: I do not think that that would arise, as I will seek to show in now coming to my second point.
First, we would have the elected hereditary element. Secondly, we would, of course, preserve the unrestricted right of the Government of the day to create both life peerages and new hereditary peerages, so that the Government's power, as it were, to bend the will of the Upper Chamber to their way would be no less under this scheme than it was in 1947, under the Socialists, or in 1911 under the Liberals. In other words, the Government could at any time create whatever number of new peers they needed to get their legislation through.
I seriously suggest to the Government that that idea is worth considering, because, if it were within the terms of reference of the Committee to consider it—as I think it is—it would make the question of renunciation irrelevant. It would also make the question of retrospection no longer applicable because, plainly, if, let us say, as from the next Parliament we had a proportion of elected

hereditary peers who would be returned to represent their colleagues, anybody who did not submit himself for election would be free to stand for election to the House of Commons without any element of retrospection arising.
People say that for some reason or other the two parties cannot agree about the composition of the Second Chamber, but I cannot help feeling that we say that rather too glibly. Why cannot the two parties agree? Is it really beyond the bounds of possibility to have such a scheme, which is not very revolutionary—particularly if powers are taken out of the discussion? Is it really so difficult to get agreement?
I hope that my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General will not think me impertinent if I say that I think that the Government's behaviour over this matter has been flexible rather than agile, but we can at any rate be grateful for the measure of flexibility they have shown. Now after all the anger and tumult has died down—and we had some controversial debates on the subject a year ago—and the dust has settled, I rejoice to find myself, if not on the side of the angels, at least on the side of the Government Whips, and that is something to be thankful for in these difficult times.
If, as I hope, the Government, in cooperation with the Opposition, agree to set up this Committee, I hope that they will do so quickly. If they then agree to act on the recommendations of the Committee and not put them in a pigeon hole, I think that we can take the matter out of the realms of party controversy. If we do that, we will give a healthier appearance to our parliamentary institutions, and preserve the unique value of a Second Chamber.

7.0 p.m.

Mr. F. J. Bellenger: I wish that the two parties in the House could agree on some compromise solution to the question of the House of Lords, but I think that the differences between us are so irreconcilable, particularly with regard to the hereditary principle, that there is no chance whatever of the Labour party in opposition agreeing with the Government.
I admired the robust speech of the hon. Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro). I wish that his point of view


were echoed in the Conservative Party. I doubt very much whether it will be, because the very wording of this Motion seems to me to weight the issue in one direction. In considering why this Motion has been brought forward, hon. Gentlemen must realise that it was not merely sparked off by the Wedgwood Benn case. The Government have tabled this Motion because they know that sitting on their side of the House and supporting them there is the hon. Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr. St. Clair) who was rejected by the electors of South-East Bristol.
The Government know the danger of this kind of thing spreading. It will destroy the democratic principle on which each of us is elected to membership of the House. It makes no difference whether we call ourselves Labour or Conservative. It is the individual who, with a majority of votes, is declared to be the Member of Parliament for that constituency. At the moment we have this glaring anomaly of an hon. Member sitting in the House without having received a majority of votes at an election in his constituency. It is small wonder, therefore, that the Government are asking us to consider a Motion which will mean that the individual who was democratically elected will be able to sit in the House again and vote as a Member of the House, which he is not able to do at the moment because of the peerage he inherited.
I am not satisfied with the wording of the Motion, but I do not wish to oppose it. I think that it is the only compromise that could have been agreed upon by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition, because obviously he wants to get back to this House to represent the constituency which at the moment is misrepresented the individual who will support him and his party. The only way of doing this under the present system is to get the Government to move towards our point of view, which is that an individual should be entitled to stand as a candidate for Parliament and be elected by the electors. The artificial bar that has been placed in the path of Mr. Wedgwood Benn prevents him from sitting in this House and representing those electors who at the by-election, and indeed at the General Election, said, "This is our man".
I do not believe that the Government will respond to the request of the hon. Member for Kidderminster and make this Joint Committee truly representative of all points of view. I suspect that the members of the Committee will be carefully hand-picked. I do not for a moment think that on the Government side there will be a Member who holds the point of view expressed by the hon. Member for Kidderminster, although I hope—and I say this in the presence of the Leader of the Opposition—that those who represent the Labour Party will be quite clear of at any rate the majority point of view, if not the point of view of the whole Labour Party, that hereditary titles must go. This has been our policy for many years. May I say in parenthesis that I am in favour of a Second Chamber, but this Second Chamber should be properly constituted. Merely to put there as part of the legislature individuals who have done nothing more than be the eldest sons of their fathers is making a mockery of democracy in 1962.
I hope that hon. Gentlemen opposite, or at any rate those who have stayed to listen to the debate, will recognise that when the Report of the Committee is received we must deal with this matter completely and not merely piecemeal. I think that the reform of the House of Lords must come at some time, just as the great Reform Act of 1832 dealt with the question of those who were entitled to vote. We are moving into different times, and if we are to have a second Chamber—and I have said that I agree that we should—we must establish it in accordance with modern ideas. However estimable peers may be—and I am thinking of peers like the Foreign Secretary and Lord Salisbury—the fact remains that they owe their position to the creation of a peerage in many cases generations, or perhaps even centuries, ago.
I can see the difficulty of the noble Lord the Member for Dorset (Viscount Hinchingbrooke). I believe that the peerage which may one day come to him is an ancient one, but most of the peerages in the House of Lords are of more or less modern creation. When I say "modern" I do not mean created in this century, but perhaps in the last century.
We have, therefore, moved with the times to the extent that some hereditary peerages are more or less modern, but we have to go further, and indeed the Conservative Party recognised the necessity for this because it brought in the Life Peerages Bill which became an Act. I have no objection to life peerages. I think that they are on a par with the creation of the law lords who are made peers for life only, but the difference is that the law lords are selected from among the most eminent individuals in the legal profession. If life peers were selected in a similar way, for their eminence in public life or for the contribution they could make to debates in the House of Lords, there would not be much wrong with that.
I should like to tell the House a little story about something which happened recently in my constituency when I was giving my views on the subject of peerages. One of my supporters, a miner who had been working in the industry for many years, and who is now an alderman, said, "I would not disagree, Mr. Bellenger, if some day you were made a life peer. Indeed, I would support you wholeheartedly, whatever the party said, and I would do it on this ground alone, that you had served this constituency for a good number of years and were entitled to some public recognition".
I am making no claim for a peerage. I have not the slightest doubt that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition is consulted about those hon. Members on this side of the House who should go to another place, and I am sure that it would not be difficult to see him privately about this if I wanted to, but I do not want to move. I merely tell that story to show that at any rate some miners recognise the necessity, probably the justice, of having another Chamber, just as they recognise the necessity of having aldermen who are selected, and not elected, to serve on local authorities.
I ask hon. Members to take a broad point of view and to recognise that the number of life peerages will greatly increase. That, in itself, will alter the complexion of the other place. But the face remains that among the hereditary peers there is a built-in support for the Consuervative Party which could cause trouble, if necessary, at any time when

there is a Labour Government in office. In my opinion that is entirely wrong. Whatever we may say about the hereditary system, it is unfair that any Chamber should be able to frustrate the will of the electorate, even to a limited extent, when a majority one way or the other is elected to this House.
After the Joint Committee has reported I hope that my party will come down firmly in support of one principle which I hold to be absolutely essential. It is that if we are to allow heirs to peerages to renounce their hereditary right, and therefore their right to sit in another place, it shall be done once and for all. I understand that there may be difficulties about some peerages which have been created in certain ways. The Leader of the House told us that there are certain property considerations which would have to be taken into account. With his ingenuity in matters relating to the law I should have thought that the Attorney-General could deal with this point without providing that it shall be an in-an-out system; that is to say, that peers can renounce their right to sit in the House of Lords, either for the whole of their lifetime or for a limited period in order, to sit in this House, and then resume all privileges for themselves or their successors which flow from membership of another place. Many of them are substantial privileges.

Mr. J. A. Leavey: Presumably the right hon. Gentleman would not go so far as to say that one who has renounced an hereditary peerage would be disqualified from accepting a life peerage, were it offered. That would put such people at a disadvantage compared with other citizens.

Mr. Bellenger: I agree with the noble Lord the Member for Dorset, South. Once an heir to a peerage has renounced his hereditary right he should be in the same position as other people and be eligible for a life peerage. All I am concerned about is to do away with the hereditary principle. As I said earlier, I am in agreement with the system of life peerages.
Whatever my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock (Miss Lee) may say about the illogicality of my party voting against a Second Reading of the Life Peerages Bill and then continuing to support the


principle of recommending ox approving hon. Members from this side of the House to go to another place, the fact remains that we are all practical people. We know that on many occasions we may have to oppose a Second Reading of a Bill but afterwards assist in its operation when it has received a majority approval. My hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. M. Foot) should be a little careful. I seem to remember that he opposed the principle of the I.T.V. legislation, but I do not think that has prevented him from appearing subsequently on the I.T.V. television screen, at a price. I do not object to his right to do so but I say that if we are to be consistent, as was suggested by my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock, we should renounce the benefits which are likely to accrue from legislation to which we object.
I do not know whether it is possible to appeal successfully to hon. Members opposite to shed their prejudices about these matters. There is no doubt that members of the Conservative Party still have a prejudice regarding the hereditary principle. We on this side of the House hold different views. We shall not oppose this Motion. But I shall support the Motion with the qualification that if the Joint Committee recommends that peerages should be renounced for a limited period, I shall oppose its Report.

7.15 p.m.

Captain John Litchfield: With the exception of the hon. Lady the Member for Cannock (Miss Lee), nearly every hon. Member who has spoken has suggested that the terms of reference for this proposed Joint Committee are too narrow. I feel that it would be a mistake for the terms of reference to be interpreted as widely as has been suggested by the right hon. Member for Bassetlaw (Mr. Bellenger). It seems to me that the central issue before such a committee would not be so much the reform of the House of Lords as the reform of the membership of the House of Commons, that is to say, the anomalies which exist at present which result in the possibility of a Member of this House finding himself compulsorily removed to another place.
The whole problem of the House of Lords reform through the ages has been bedevilled by the difficulty of getting

within sight of agreement on the major issues of reform. I believe it would be to our advantage to move step by step rather than to attempt to achieve too much at once. I hope that the proposed Joint Committee will not interpret its terms of reference unduly widely. Otherwise it will become involved in arguments which will block progress and at the end we shall not be much farther ahead than when we started.
I want to be brief. I am a great believer in simplicity and so I shall limit my remarks to a comparatively restricted field, and submit certain proposals. I am sure that I am not alone in thinking that no citizen of this country who would otherwise be qualified should be denied the right to offer himself for election to this House simply because of his blood; or, if elected, to take his seat in this House and to vote here as an hon. Member. I also know that some hon. Members, on this side of the House, at any rate, hope as I do that the hereditary system will not be thrown overboard altogether, as was suggested by the right hon. Member for Bassetlaw. I see no reason why both these difficulties should not be resolved by a simple act of legislation which I propose to put to the House in a moment.
There are objections against requiring a peer irrevocably to renounce, extinguish, surrender—or whatever hon. Members like to call it—his peerage, either for himself or for his family, before he can enter this House. If we could solve this problem and get rid of the anomalies which we all recognise, there are some peers who might wish to enter this House where they might have much to contribute, and it is possible that it might be in the national interest that some should become Members of this House. But they might be unwilling to renounce their birthright and thus would be debarred. I do not favour a solution on the lines of compelling a peer to take irrevocable action, either for himself or for his family, before he can come into this House.
I have a solution to submit to the House which I have already offered to my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House, who strangely enough received it with no enthusiasm. I have little expectation that it will be received with any acclamation on either side of the House tonight, but I hope that on further


consideration it will be found to have some merits by the Committee. I differ from my noble Friend the Member for Dorset, South (Viscount Hinchingbrooke), who proposed a one-Clause Bill. My Bill would have two Clauses. I suggest the following. First, peers should be granted the same rights as other qualified persons to stand for election and, if elected, to sit and vote in this House. Secondly, I should like to see the principle that no person can be a Member of both Houses at the same time reaffirmed. I stop there. If the solution were made as simple as that and stopped where I suggest it should stop, it follows automatically that a peer would be free to resume his right to sit in the House of Lords on relinquishing his seat in the House of Commons.

Mr. C. Pannell: I hope that the hon. and gallant Gentleman will not continue under the illusion that his idea is original. Many people have made this suggestion, but it has always been shot down, because the House of Commons is not to be considered to be a place to which someone can get elected and then scuttle to another place when he is defeated at an election. If the hon. and gallant Gentleman's principle were adopted, I can foresee peers standing in marginal constituencies and we should not know whether they were in one House or in the other after a series of General Elections.

Captain Litchfield: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. Anyone who claimed to be original in anything he said in this House would be in dire peril of being shot down on that score alone. The fact that the suggestion is not original does not affect my view that it is a sensible, practical and simple solution. I remind the hon. Gentleman that I began by saying that I did not think that it would be received with acclamation on either side of the House. It does not affect the merits of the suggestion, even if it is not original.
One of the merits of a solution on these lines—I claim no originality—is that it would require simple legislation. It would offend against no important constitutional principle. It would be clearly understood in the country. It would certainly do away with the anomalies from which we suffer at the moment.

Mr. Bellenger: Mr. Bellenger indicated dissent.

Captain Litchfield: The right hon. Member for Bassetlaw obviously does not agree with me.

Mr. Bellenger: Neither will the country.

Captain Litchfield: That is a matter of opinion. Legislation and constitutions—one has only to think of constitutional proposals in Africa as an example—nowadays tend to become more and more complicated, until we almost need a computer to understand some of them. Therefore, I attach great importance to brevity and simplicity in whatever we do in this matter. I appreciate that this solution will be, and in fact is being, criticised as giving peers the best of both worlds. There are objections to any scheme which the Joint Committee may propose. We all owe something to chance in some way, even if it is only the luck of a selection committee in a constituency, to luck, or to birth, or some such thing. I hope that hon. Members will not dismiss my suggestion out of hand merely because it tends to give one group in the community a little of the best of both worlds or a little advantage over somebody else.
If the House means business, we should aim at a simple solution which can easily be put through. A simple Bill should be drawn up. I commend this unoriginal solution to the consideration of the Joint Committee. I hope—we are all agreed about this—that the Joint Committee will be set up as soon as possible.

7.25 p.m.

Mr. F. H. Hayman: The hon. and gallant Member for Chelsea (Captain Litchfield) favoured a simple solution, but his solution did not seem very simple to me, unless it meant that a hereditary peer would have an advantage over a commoner in that he could choose to sit in this Chamber and, if he were defeated at a General Election, could opt to go to the House of Lords.
I have a much more simple solution, but it is not the subject of this debate. My solution is that the hereditary principle should be abolished altogether. It is a complete anachronism in this day


and age. If we need a Second Chamber in the British Parliament, it should be done in a modern way and its powers should be settled in an up-to-date fashion.
My hon. Friend the Member for Lincoln (Mr. Taverne), who made a magnificent maiden speech this afternoon, which we all admired, spoke of the tribalism of blood by which the Members of the House of Lords seem to get appointed. Whether we like the phrase or not, it is a kind of tribalism. I have gained the impression from the speeches of some hon. Members opposite today that the older the membership of the tribe the more revered the modern Member is.
The whole essence of democracy as we know it today is that one man is the equal of another in status in our society. There is no special privilege of blood, or of heredity, or anything else. Each of us is born with certain aptitudes and intellectual capacities. Fortunately, in our State today, any man or woman of 21, except a peer, is entitled to stand for a seat in Parliament. A few years ago the Conservative Government had to agree to a breach in the hereditary principle by conceding the principle of life peers. Today, the Conservative Government are promoting a Motion which will involve, if it is carried, another breach in the hereditary principle.
I am sure that within a few years there will be such a hurricane of change that the whole principle of heredity in the House of Lords will be blown away.

7.28 p.m.

Dr. Alan Glyn: I do not share the views of the hon. Member for Falmouth and Camborne (Mr. Hayman). Almost every hon. Member who has spoken today, with the exception of the hon. Lady the Member for Cannock (Miss Lee), has appreciated the advantage of a bicameral system in this country. This was particularly stressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Torquay (Mr. F. M. Bennett), who drew attention to Parliaments in the newly developing countries where despotisms could arise, not that it could arise in this country. However, it is a protection of the democratic principle that we

should have two Chambers in this country.

Sir H. Legge-Bourke: My hon. Friend the Member for Torquay (Mr. F. M. Bennett) wants three Chambers, not two.

Dr. Glyn: My hon. Friend is entitled to an opinion on that point.
The right hon. Member for Bassetlaw (Mr. Bellenger) said that, if any reform is to be made, there is a danger of the Upper House being loaded against the Labour Party. It would be very difficult constitutionally to overcome such a position. It happens in America and many other countries where the two parties are different in the two chambers.
Under the terms of reference of the Committee, the constitution of the House of Lords and its powers could be considered simply by virtue of its wording, "the rights" of peers of England and peers of Great Britain, both of whom sit by virtue of their peerages. I am certain that we should adopt this wider interpretation which I would welcome, for it would be preferable to the piecemeal legislation for reform of the House of Lords which we are now attempting to introduce.
I welcome the Motion because it enables a few anomalies to be cleared up—Scottish non-representative peers and peeresses in their own right have their rights respected, and I am sure that we all accept that and give it our blessing. But the question of the surrender of a peerage is quite different. There are certain to be great legal difficulties, because many peerages are attached to land and other possessions. In the case of the Duke of Wellington, and, I think, of the Duke of Marlborough, there are special provisions passed by Parliament whereby estates and lands go with the title. It would be extraordinarily difficult for people to surrender their titles without surrendering their other rights.
There is a way out of this difficulty, and it was well brought out by my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster (Mr. Berkeley). The answer would be to reform the House of Lords so that it consisted of, say, 50 per cent. life peers and 50 per cent. hereditary, so that peers no longer needed to give up their peerages. The Second Chamber would be a Chamber fit—if that is the word—for them to debate in. It would be a


strong Second Chamber, composed of 50 per cent. life peers and 50 per cent. hereditary peers who would be elected by the peers themselves, just as the Irish peers were elected prior to 1922.
In that way we would have a ready-made stock of Members of Parliament who would be on a hereditary basis, but whose numbers could be eventually balanced by equal numbers of life peerages. If there were no limit on the number of peerages, either hereditary or life, which could be created by the Sovereign, there would be no danger of the will of the Upper House prevailing as it did in 1910.
I am sure that it is possible, with the good will of the Opposition, to adopt the wider interpretation of the Motion. But the whole of the constitution should be studied at the same time, not only to remove the minor anomalies affecting the rights of certain peers, such as the peers of Scotland, but to provide a really strong and effective Second Chamber.
I do not want to deal with whether the powers of the House of Lords should be increased or decreased, but we do want a powerful Second Chamber which is respected throughout the world. This arrangement would be a compromise and has to be a compromise, but, as and when the Government of the day thought fit, life peers could be created. I hope that the selection of those peers would be from among people in all walks of life, so as to provide a representative section of the community. I have no hesitation in supporting the Motion.

7.33 p.m.

Mr. Michael Foot: I shall deal in a moment with the last point make by the hon. Member for Clapham (Dr. Alan Glyn), but I should like first to add a few words in support of what was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock (Miss Lee), who expressed generally by views on the Motion and on the subject of the Second Chamber. There is a difficulty about voting directly against the Motion, which was what the hon. Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro) suggested as the course that we should follow. There is some difficulty for those of us who have wished that Mr. Wedgwood Benn was able to return to the House and that others in the same predicament should be able to find some escape.
One good effect of the Motion is that Mr. Wedgwood Benn and others will be able to renounce their peerages, and in that sense the Motion removes a harsh injustice which many of us have wished to see removed. In that respect, the Motion constituents a triumph for the electors of Bristol, South-East who have persistently shown that they were opposed to the hardship which was imposed upon their Member. They have fought with great gallantry and persistence to enable him to escape from the situation in which he was placed and they deserve every compliment on the stamina which they have shown in fighting this case through. The same applies with even greater force to Mr. Wedgwood Benn himself.
Unfortunately, the Motion raises other and larger implications. The hon. Member for Kidderminster said that my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock and I and some others were abolitionists. I am certainly an abolitionist in the sense that I am not in favour of continuing to have a Second Chamber, but I am not an abolitionist in the sense merely of doing away with the hereditary principle as it applies to the House of Lords.
The difficulty is whether we deal merely with the hereditary principle in the House of Lords or put something in its place that would make it a much more respectable institution than it now is. Every constitution-monger who has tried to devise a Second Chamber which does not interfere with the democratic rights of the main Chamber has come up against great difficulties. The most ingenious solution of the problem which I have heard put forward was that put forward by Mr. Geoffrey Bing when these matters were discussed in 1948. Even Lord Salisbury said that if anybody could propose a system of dealing with the built-in Conservative majority in the House of Lords, he would be only too glad to consider it. What Mr. Geoffrey Bing proposed was that at every General Election those who were elected would come to this House and those who came second would go to the House of Lords. In that way there would always be a check in the House of Lords and that would meet all the theories about checks and balances which Lord Salisbury advanced. This would provide the solution, but it is such


a ludicrous solution that nobody in the House would support it.
But many of us think that the present situation is ludicrous, and neither more nor less ludicrous than that devised by Geoffrey Bing for getting out of this dilemma. I suppose that it would be beyond the terms of reference of the Committee to consider Geoffrey Bing's solution of the problem, but I offer it to the Attorney-General as the only logical way of dealing with the problem, if all the Government want to do is to ensure that if they have a Conservative majority here, there is a Labour check on it in the House of Lords. Of course, the proposition is not serious.
For that reason it is not sufficient for those who are opposed to the House of Lords as it stands merely to say that they would be satisfied with a House of Lords in which the hereditary principle had been abolished. What would have to be put in its place if it were not to be an elected Chamber of the kind I have described would be some form of appointed Chamber, or a Chamber partly appointed, as was suggested by the hon. Member for Clapham. The system of appointing people to the House of Lords tends to open new possibilities of patronage of one form or another, and that is the most dangerous aspect of the whole thing.
Leaving aside the possibility of doing away with the hereditary system in the House of Lords, which we know is not open to us under these proposals, the reason why I and others regard parts of the Motion with great suspicion and some alarm and why I have argued against thinking that it is sufficient to do away with the hereditary principle if we have to have a Second Chamber, is that I would rather have a ridiculous Second Chamber than a reformed Second Chamber. On the whole, we have a ridiculous Second Chamber. Every step which is taken to remodel it or introduce some amelioration of the more ludicrous characteristics of the House of Lords makes it slightly more respectable. Lord Salisbury and those who have carefully studied these matters understand this well. They are no longer insisting upon enlarging the powers of the House of Lords because they believe that if they can reform its outward composition, they

will achieve something like the present House of Lords which still possesses considerable powers.
We know that in the days of the Labour Government the Lords held up a most important Measure—the nationalisation of the steel industry. They held it up for a considerable period. They were able to insist upon a second General Election before the Government could carry out their mandate in this respect. But it was also open to the Lords to hold up many other forms of legislation. They could take action through Orders and hold up many Measures put forward in the House of Commons.
It is wrong for people to suppose that the House of Lords does not have any powers on the present basis. It has considerable powers, delaying and disruptive powers, and if it became more useful, although its powers might not be formally increased, they could be increased in fact. That is exactly what Lord Salisbury wants. Indeed, he does not really disguise it and many hon. Members who have spoken today and in previous debates have made it clear that what they want to do is to strengthen the House of Lords, not necessarily by increasing the powers directly, but by making it a more useful place so that it lasts for the next 100 or 200 years as it has survived for several centuries. Therefore, we are extremely concerned that this peril should be warded off.
The most serious Measure that was taken to bolster up the House of Lords and which has been carried in some respects much further than some people expected at the time, was the arrangement whereby life peers were to be appointed. Many hon. Members have said that this has advanced a good deal further than many people supposed when the original Measure was introduced. It has gone very far.
The right hon. Member for Bassetlaw (Mr. Bellenger) welcomes this because though he denied the suggestion that he wanted to go there himself—at least not in the next batch—he did at least suggest that he thought that it was doing a great deal of good. He said that if only these life peers continue to be appointed at the rapid rate that we have seen in recent years, the composition of the House of Lords will be changed


pretty rapidly. That is perfectly true. But that was not why some of us, or why the Labour Party itself, opposed the appointment of life peers.
I think that the right hon. Gentleman has described how in fact by the present rate of appointment of life peers they could carry out exactly the kind of alteration in the whole aspect of the House of Lords which the Government, and, even more, the House of Lords itself, has wanted.
I hope with the hon. Member for Kidderminster—I agree with him in this at least—that there will be some very vigilant Members on the Committee appointed to watch this aspect of the matter, to see that the proposals in the Motion are not stretched any further than they have been stretched already, and to make sure that, if possible, the whole recommendation's of the Select Committee should be confined to the question of the renunciation of the peerage by people in the same kind of position as Mr. Wedgwood Benn. If we could achieve that it would be a considerable success. We must watch very carefully, both in the Committee and when the Measures are brought back to this House, the further proposals which are made. We must make sure that they do not assist the idea of the right hon. Member for Bassetlaw of giving a blood transfusion to the enfeebled House of Lords, which will make it a little more respectable in the eyes of the public.
I am glad that the Leader of the House in his announcement did not refer to the other most sinister innovation made at the time of the Life Peerages Bill, which was for the payment of peers. That is really opening the door to patronage. I do not say that the money that they get now is very much. It is not very much. But the idea, no doubt, is to have a situation in which eventually they will be paid a living wage. I am sure that that is what the Government would like, and it would be passed, probably unanimously, in the other place. They would like it there, I am sure. They would vote for it even in the midst of a pay pause. Of course they would like it. What is the position if that is the case? We shall have the position developing—it has already started—whereby the Prime Minister

and the Leader of the Opposition have in their hands enormous capacities for patronage. They already have very considerable powers.
We already have a swollen Government. If they put many more people in the Government there will be hardly any one left on the back benches. We shall be having new Ministers and Under-Secretaries all the time. It is now in operation. They have got six at the Foreign Office. In my young days, they had two. They are breeding like rabbits on the Treasury Bench. I do not like to use the word vermin. I know that it is used in another connection, but that is the way in which they are breeding Ministers.
This also applies to the Opposition. On the Opposition Front Bench the Leader of the Opposition and the Whips' department already have some powers of patronage, and this would enormously enlarge their powers of patronage and we should have a position where two men in the House of Commons, not answerable for the actions which they take in this respect, would be able to offer, dangle, suggest, or hint that good prospects could be provided for those who were obedient during their life in this place. They have already means of their own of persuading people to speak and vote as they desire, and this would enormously multiply that interest. I am not suggesting that any of the present occupants of these positions would dare to exercise these powers in a way in which any of us would disapprove, but we cannot always be sure that the same rigid standards of today will be maintained in the future.
We should very swiftly get back to the situation that we had in the eighteenth century, with huge powers of distribution of favours and offers and patronage assembled in the hands of the two—or maybe we have even three—political leaders. [Laughter.] Hon. Members opposite may laugh. It suited them for centuries. A great battle had to be fought in this country because at one time the Conservative Party had a great part of this patronage assembled in its hands. I know that the Whigs had their mouths in the trough as well. It suited them very well. The whole fight for democracy in the eighteenth


century and the beginning of the nineteenth century was against patronage and corruption.
I know that it is not a good thing to mention this in the presence of the noble Lord the Member for Dorset, South (Viscount Hinchingbrooke). His family played a considerable part in it. I think that it was said of one of his ancestors that from puzzling all his life over tavern bills he was called to be Chancellor of the Exchequer and he participated in the corruption of those days which was regarded as perfectly normal and proper. They were all in the same game. [Interruption.] I apologise if I have got it wrong. They were all participating in it and they thought it was a perfectly proper thing to do.
How was that atmosphere changed? It was changed only because of people like the Chartists who fought for democracy long before other people did. They fought for it outside the House; they engaged in demonstrations and marches—they did not always sit down, but they marched—outside the House. They had to fight for democracy outside the doors of this House, and eventually they fought the Conservative Party and the Whig Party and shamed them into abandoning their corrupt practices, though I do not say that they have all been abandoned yet. This was the classic fight to secure the kind of Parliament that we have today. Hon. Members may smile, but they know this to be the truth.
Therefore, we should watch extremely carefully the peril of those old practices being brought back into the House of Commons by the back door or by the respectable means of a Select Committee or by hon. Members saying "Well, you know, we paid them £3 before and the cost of living has gone up since then. Even if we give them even less than we are giving the nurses, we have got to give them an increase now." Eventually we should finish up with a situation in which not merely would the balance between the House of Commons and the House of Lords be tilted in favour of the House of Lords once more, but in which here in this House itself our operations would be greatly influenced by the huge new powers of patronage bestowed on the leaders of the political

parties. I therefore hope that the House will watch the whole of this process extremely carefully.
As I said earlier, I am in favour of wiping away the whole ridiculous edifice. I do not think that it performs any useful function. I do not accept the idea that they have in the House of Lords these grand debates which are of a much higher standard than occur in the House of Commons. If we look at their record throughout the centuries, coming up to modern times, we find that almost without exception it is an appalling record of reaction and persistent idiocy. So let us not be deluded by the idea that we ought to build up that place. Even more, do not let us take action which could further injure and impair the authority of the House of Commons. I should like to see the Opposition Front Bench proposing a Measure—I know that we will not have it yet—to abolish the other place altogether. If that is not possible, at least let it die a natural death. For goodness sake, do not apply to it any form of artificial respiration.

7.53 p.m.

Mr. G. R. Mitchison: I share the admiration of my hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. M. Foot) for the Chartists. They were very good at co-operation in a common cause on one charter, to all of which, notwithstanding certain differences of opinion, they adhered.
I have listened to this debate with very great interest and I think it has been an extremely good and useful debate. It was enlivened and enriched by one of the best maiden speeches that we have heard in this place for many a day, from my hon. Friend the Member for Lincoln (Mr. Taverne). It was fresh and lively. It contained much of the meat of the matter, and it was not too long. I know the dangers of speaking for too long, and I am trying to avoid them at the moment.
This is a matter of considerable constitutional importance, though I regard the Motion that we are discussing as much more narrow than some of the speeches would indicate. I say that, looking not only at the terms of the Motion but at its history. It began with Amendments in the Committee of Privileges, one by my right hon. Friend the


Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede) and one moved by myself and for which my right hon. Friends voted. One of those was simply this—and I am referring to the relevant part. First, we pointed out that life peerages had made a difference in this matter and that they began not really with the recent Act but with the appointment of life peerages for the Law Lords in 1876.
We said:
It seems at least open to question whether the doctrine, that no man may renounce an inherited peerage and that the effect of such inheritance is to debar him from rights of voting and of representation otherwise generally accorded to his fellow citizens, is consistent with the principles and practice of modern democracy.
That is the way that I look at this question. I think that practically nobody today has denied that there was something in inheritance of that kind which deprived a person of rights of voting and rights of representing his fellow citizens.
We have heard a lot today about peerages as though they were an unmixed blessing. I can assure the House that I know several cases where they are very much the opposite, where they get in the way of people who want to carry on their careers as ordinary competing citizens—not with these mediaeval embellishments hanging about them. The same goes for people who want to come to this place and exercise their rights as Members and even voters.
This was voted down at the time by the Conservative majority on the Privileges Committee. Then on 26th April the then Leader of the House, the Home Secretary, moved the appointment of a Joint Select Committee. I am going to refer to the terms of reference because they matter a good deal. The first concerned the composition of the House of Lords. That has been abandoned in the Motion today. The second one follows almost exactly the language of today's Motion:
… whether any, and, if so what, changes should be made in the rights of peers and peeresses in their own right in regard to eligibility to sit in either House of Parliament and to vote at parliamentary elections.…
The description of peers has been expanded a little, but there is nothing that matters in it. The last three lines have been altered a little but I can find no substantial distinction. This is in

substance the second of the three headings that were put forward on 26th April. The third one—and this has been dropped too—is about remuneration.
My right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition has been called upon to take the chair at a meeting arranged for the Mayor of Berlin and it was hoped and expected that he would be able to combine that duty with being here, but he has found it impossible to do so and has asked me to make his apologies to the House. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition suggested on 26th April:
I was asking whether the terms of reference could be altered so that the inquiry could be confined to what is most urgent, and to what there is most likely to be agreement about, namely, the second part of the terms of reference."—[OFFICIAL REPORT. 26th April. 1961; Vol. 639, c. 425.]
That request was refused at the time but it has now been met, and what we are discussing today is exactly the second part of the terms of reference in the Motion on 26th April.
Of course, it is for the Select Committee itself to consider the language of the remit—I entirely agree with that—but I imagine that the Select Committee will have in mind when considering the matter that a previous Motion proposed to the House referred deliberately first to the composition of the House of Lords and secondly to the question of remuneration. The Government pressed the matter at the time and it is only subsequently that those two points have been dropped.
It would be flouting the arrangements which have been made between the parties if there were brought in by a side-wind the two questions which have deliberately been omitted in order to secure an early decision, which is "most urgent", and an agreed decision. I cannot think that the Select Committee would wish to do that or that, if it did it, the House itself would, in view of the history of the matter, wish to construe the terms of reference in the way they have been stretched by some speakers in the debate. Therefore, I keep to what is clearly in the terms of reference, avoiding the very interesting speculations about what might be done in regard to the composition of the House of Lords or, for that matter, the remuneration of its Members.
I simply say—I think I can without hesitation speak for my own party here, and not only for my own party today but for my own party over many years past—that we will not consider questions of the reform of the composition of the House of Lords unless they are coupled with an examination of its powers. Further, I say this about the powers of the House of Lords, It is not a question of whether at any given moment they are exercised. They were exercised very seriously, as one of my hon. Friends pointed out, in connection with the Iron and Steel Bill. They are there and they include not only powers to delay legislation but powers to annul a large number of Statutory Orders. These powers have never been exercised in fact. If the House of Lords chose to do so, it could upset the working of the machinery of Government very seriously and for a long time. It cannot be right that we should be dependent on the good will, timidity, or public spirit, or whatever it may be, of a non-elected assembly for dealing with matters which pertain to an elected assembly such as we are. That is the general point I make.
I come now to the question of renunciation, which is the real question in the Motion. We are here considering only the terms of reference to a Select Committee. We cannot prejudge what conclusions the Select Committee will arrive at, and we are trying to help the Committee as best we can by giving an indication of our view of these matters. It is obvious that there are considerable differences, but it is equally obvious that there is a very broad measure of agreement running through all the speeches on the subject of renunciation. This does not apply to everybody, but the weight of opinion, as I heard it today in the House, has been in favour of allowing people to renounce.
Why not? It is monstrous that people who wish to take a part in public life which nowadays can be played only in this House should be debarred from taking it because of a hereditary—I was going to say a hereditary blemish, but perhaps hereditary peerage is the better way of putting it. This is equally true, though in a much smaller way, of voting. People ought to be allowed to vote in an election. Peers may not vote. They are not the only people. There are many

other disqualifications, but this is the one we are talking about today.
In my view, a person must choose. He ought not to keep half a foot in one camp and half in another, going in and out, coming to speak at the Bar or following any rather ridiculous practice of that kind inconsistent with our constitution and habits. He must renounce the whole thing, renouncing for his children and everybody else. After all is said and done, someone or other at the beginning of the story assented on behalf of large numbers of then unborn children who later found themselves becoming the Duke of Omnium or whatever it is in succession down the ages. There is no real difference between the two. That is the only logical thing to do.
It was suggested that such a person might become a peer again. I think that the noble Lord the Member for Dorset, South (Viscount Hinchingbrooke) thought that he might renounce his family title and later take a new one. To that I simply say that strawberry leaves in this respect are like roses; they smell as sweet by any name. It does not matter whether someone is called the Duke of Omnium or the Marquess of Mehitabel—that is the name of a cat, I think; but the name does not matter. We must get away from the idea that someone can keep a foot in the other camp when he has elected to disembarrass himself of it.
I am not very particular about what names people like to call themselves for their own purposes. For that reason, I consistently refer to the present Viscount Stansgate as Anthony Wedgwood Benn and write to him accordingly. It can be one way or the other in the matter of names, but when it comes to anything effective, anything in real terms, a man must renounce once and for all.
There are many other questions. One or two were mentioned by the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the House. I think that they are matters which we need not go into today. I think that I have stated the principle.
Who may renounce? Here, I speak for myself, not for my party. I think that they may agree, though I do not know yet. In my view, it is impossible to allow someone to renounce on the ground that he has not taken his seat.
We cannot leave the door open indefinitely, but we ought to allow him the opportunity of coming back here, and it is illogical to found the decision on refusal to take a seat in the House of Lords. Therefore, for my part, I agree with what the Home Secretary said on 8th May, when he assured us that
nobody would have been happier than we would"—
I think that the "we" must mean the Government, in spite of the reading which the hon. Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro) gave to it—
to have had Lord Hailsham with us in the House at the present time."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 8th May, 1961; Vol. 640, c. 42.]
Therefore, if the House and the electors of Bristol are to bring back to us Mr. Anthony Wedgwood Benn, as we hope and believe that they will, we shall have to accept—not reluctantly from all points of view—that Lord Hailsham and others should be entitled to come.

Viscount Hinchingbrooke: How far back does the hon. and learned Gentleman propose to go? He has been making a very wishy-washy, woolly sort of speech, not defining any of his terms and not being at all clear. He said that we can go back a certain distance. How far?

Mr. Mitchison: I am sorry if I did not make myself clear to the noble Lord. I assure him that I was trying to be as definite as I could. I will answer his question: anyone in the House of Lords today. I am not in favour of resurrecting the dead and bringing them back here. Short of that, I would give them a reasonable opportunity to come back. I should not have thought that that was so difficult a proposition for the noble Lord to follow in the first instance, but, of course, one never knows.

Viscount Hinchingbrooke: It was not clear.

Mr. Mitchison: The noble Lord says that I did not make it clear. That was, no doubt, my fault.
This is mot an occasion for someone winding up a debate to make a long speech about the position of the House of Lords on matters of that kind. We are discussing only the terms of reference to a Select Committee. The Select Committee will have to make its report, and

the report will have to be considered by the House.
I conclude on this note. The Motion is the result of an agreement which, I may say, conforms very closely with the views which we on this side of the House have previously expressed. I am glad that it does. That is a sensible agreement and the right one. It is, similarly, sensible that the Select Committee should report and that the House should consider that report.
I feel sure that both the Select Committee and the House will bear in mind what my right hon. Friend said at the beginning of the debate; in matters of high constitutional importance such as this, there is a great deal to be said for getting the consensus of opinion of both sides of the House and a measure of agreement on the changes proposed. It is very much better to do that than to try to force through some Measure which goes against the conscience and beliefs of the minority.

8.11 p.m.

The Attorney-General (Sir Reginald Manningham-Buller): I was delighted to hear the final observation of the hon. and learned Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison), with which I agree. But it shows a sign of conversion on his account. I remember certain occasions when we stressed the desirability of trying to get agreement with regard to electoral changes, like university seats, a practice which he now wholly supports but to which he did not then completely adhere.
The hon. and learned Gentleman began by reminding us of the history of this matter and the proceedings of those days when we were together in the Committee of Privileges and the many debates we had. He traced the quite lengthy history of the terms of the Motion now before the House. I cannot but reflect how much trouble and Parliamentary time would have been saved if his then leader, the then Prime Minister, had acceded to Lord Hailsham's request so many years ago to go into this matter and, if possible, to provide some alleviation for Lord Hailsham.
That is past and we are now dealing with the situation as it exists today. All I want to say about that is this; I think my task tonight is a little lighter than


usual in that, apart from perhaps two critics, there has been really no opposition to the Motion. That is a desirable thing on a matter of this kind.
Questions have been raised about the terms of reference. As I read these terms of reference it would appear to be the case that they would not enable the Committee to consider the question of Ministers in another place coming to speak in this House. I say that for this reason. As the House will see, the Committee is being asked
to consider whether any, and if so what, changes should be made in the rights of Peers … to sit in either House".
That clearly means to sit as an hon. Member of either House. Of course, it is not for me to interpret the terms of this agreed Motion. It will be for the Committee to do that when it is appointed.
A number of hon. Members have asked me to express a view on whether or not consideration of a representative system for England would be within the terms of reference. I think it is perfectly clear, from what the hon. and learned Member for Kettering said, that that question was not one primarily in mind at the time of the appointment of the Committee. If the hon. and learned Gentleman likes to look back to the speech I made on 13th April, 1961, on this subject he will see that I drew attention, when the demand was being made for legislation immediately to meet the case of Lord Stansgate, to the problems which were linked with the problem of renunciation, the position of Scottish and Irish peers and hereditary peeresses.
If one is asked to consider a change of that kind—which is now put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for the Isle of Ely (Sir H. Legge-Bourke), and this matter was also raised by my noble Friend the Member for Dorset, South (Viscount Hinehingbrooke) and my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster (Mr. Berkeley) who, I am glad to see, found it possible not to be as critical as he usually is of the Government he is here to support—I do not see, on a matter of strict interpretation, that the words of this Motion would debar the Committee from doing this if it thought fit. It is entirely a matter for the Committee and

is not one on which I should rule. That is really all I can say on the subject.

Mr. Mitchison: I quite agree. Indeed, I said that this is a matter for the Select Committee. But I am sure that the right hon. and learned Gentleman will note that the question of the composition of the House was one that appeared in the original Motion, but which has now been dropped, and that he will agree that in considering what it should do on the matter, the Select Committee should look at the fact of the omission as well as at the precise terms of what has been left.

The Attorney-General: I would apprehend that the Committee would do so. I was asked a specific question as to whether or not that would come within the terms of the Motion. As a matter of construction of ordinary English, I do not see that it is strictly debarred. The line between composition and changes in the right to sit may, in certain respects, be difficult to draw. At least the hon. Members of the Committee of both Houses who will be taking part will have the advantage not only of being able to look at today's debate but also at preceding debates on this subject.

Mr. Mitchison: Would not the right hon. and learned Gentleman agree that where there is an agreed Motion and where the agreement has been reached by dropping the question of the composition of the House of Lords, it would be, to say the least, unfortunate if that question were reintroduced because, as a result of a literal interpretation, it might fall within the words of the Motion?

The Attorney-General: I thought I had made it clear that the Committee would have regard to the history to which the hon. and learned Gentleman referred. I thought I had explained that point. I was asked about the specific terms of this matter. I think that any Committee would have regard to the history preceding its appointment. If it had to decide on a difficult question it would certainly consider whether something was within or without its terms of reference.

Sir H. Legge-Bourke: I am grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend for the way in which he has answered the question I put to him. I would, however,


make it clear to him and to the Government that if this issue is not considered by the Committee and if it were to make any recommendation about giving peers the right to renounce their privileges, I could not support such a recommendation if the Committee had not considered this possibility.

Miss Lee: Miss Lee rose—

The Attorney-General: I urge my hon. Friend to see what the Committee reports before making up his mind on any of these subjects because one really cannot safely predict just what the Committee will report. It would be very unwise for any of us to reach a firm conclusion. I am coming to the task which it would have to deal with, which I think is not an easy one. I therefore suggest to my hon. Friend that it might not be very wise to commit himself too far in advance.

Miss Lee: In the most unlikely event of my being made a member of this Committee, I might be a very literal Scot, but I would think it extraordinary if I read my terms of reference and then said, "I am going to ignore anything to do with peeresses and Scottish, Irish and English peers. Although the wording is not such, I am going to pretend that this specifically deals only with the problem of the renunciation of peerages".

The Attorney-General: There would be nothing abnormal in the Committee interpreting its terms of reference a little more narrowly than has been suggested. I am sure that the Committee will endeavour to interpret its terms of reference as the House wished it to do. When one gets to the International Court, for instance, one is entitled to look at the travaux préparatoires when determining the construction of the document. We need not worry too much about that, however, because it is obvious, on looking back into history, that the Committee at any rate has to start with the proposition: what changes, if any, should be made in the rights to sit in this House?

Mr. Ede: This is a matter of great delicacy, because we are asking for a Joint Committee. We understand from the rumours which seep round this Palace that it is probable that

a Motion in the same terms as this one will be carried in another place. I understand that that Motion will be moved by the Government. I am prepared to accept what the Attorney-General has said about his interpretation, which I assume means the Government's interpretation, of this Motion. When a Motion identical to this one is moved in another place, will it be possible for the Government spokesman to make a statement to their Lordships on the Government's view of the interpretation of this Motion? It would be deplorable, once we embarked on this, if one House took one view of the terms of reference and the other House, where noble Lords of great legal learning are apt to intervene in debates on this kind of point, took a different view.

The Attorney-General: If the Joint Select Committee is going to be appointed, Motions in similar terms must be carried by both Houses.
I have endeavoured to answer to the best of my ability the question put to me about interpretation—interpretation of the terms of reference if considered in isolation and interpretation if considered, as the hon. and learned Gentleman suggested they should be considered, in the light of history, contrasting those terms of reference with the more expansive terms of reference before us. I do not think it would be right for me or for anyone to say how a Committee should interpret the terms of reference which it is given, but one would naturally expect the Committee, if faced with any difficulty in that connection, to have regard to what has been said, both now and earlier, and to any wider terms of reference which have been subsequently narrowed. That is as far as I can properly and usefully go.
I am glad that it has not been sought in this debate to put the case for this Committee solely as one for the benefit of Mr. Benn. There has been no suggestion of that. I think that hon. Members on both sides realise that his case has underlined a problem which has existed and been recognised by some to exist for many years.
The problem is difficult in this sense. It is easy to say that a Member of this


House should be allowed, if he wishes, to renounce a peerage and not to go to another place. But when one considers the matter in detail, what is involved? The Committee will have not only an interesting task but a somewhat difficult task. My hon. Friend the Member for Windsor (Sir C. Mott-Radclyffe) drew attention to the question whether the renunciation should be permanent, for life or for a period of life. I do not propose tonight to express any views on matters of that sort, because it is interesting that today hon. Members have expressed different views on the questions which the Committee will have to consider when only in April, 1961, we were being pressed to introduce legislation immediately and when I drew attention to the fact that the matter was not as easy as it appeared at first sight.
My hon. Friend the Member for Windsor went on to say that his yardstick was whether the House of Lords would be strengthened or weakened. I doubt whether it really strengthens the House of Lords to maintain the law that peerages cannot be renounced. That, however, is a personal view. My hon. Friend made an interesting speech on this subject, and it is a difficult question.
My hon. Friend was followed by the hon. Member for Lincoln (Mr. Taverne). I should like to say how one usually enjoys a maiden speech made in this House by a member of one's own profession and how, on this occasion, I certainly enjoyed the hon. Member's. There was, of course, only one thing wrong about it, which in the future the hon. Member may be able to remedy, and that is that he chose to make it from the wrong side of the House.

Mr. C. Pannell: The electors decided that.

The Attorney-General: I meant the wrong side of the House at the present time.
One thing which also is clear is that one cannot limit the right to renounce, if it is recommended by the Committee, just to those who become peers while in this House. It would seem that it must extend to those who succeed to peerages who are outside this House, whether or not they have political ambitions.
The question was raised by my noble Friend the Member for Dorset, South about the position regarding those who have already taken their seats in another place. To follow the example of my hon. Friend the Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro), who is no longer present, I see that on 13th April, 1961, I said:
I make the personal comment that I think it unfair that those who had taken their seats in the House of Lords and who had become Lords of Parliament should be denied the power to renounce their peerages just because they had taken their seats when it was not possible to renounce."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 13th April, 1961; Vol. 638, c. 629.]
That, again, is a matter for the Committee.
Then there is the position with regard to the Scottish peers, which certainly falls for consideration if we are giving a right of renunciation to English peers, and how that will fit in with the Scottish representative system. It has been suggested here today that those who do not become representative peers should be entitled to vote for a peer to represent them and also entitled to vote for a Member of this House. That might be said to be giving, if not the best, the better part of both worlds, but that again is a problem for the Committee to consider and to which serious attention should be given. Much the same applies with regard to the position of Irish peers and peeresses in their own right. All these involve questions which require detailed consideration.
My noble Friend the Member for Dorset, South drew attention to the words written, I think, by the then Mr. Curzon in 1895, which were in a memorandum before the Select Committee with which those of us who sat on the Committee of Privileges are familiar. Of course, Mr. George Nathaniel Curzon was in a minority on that occasion. Had he triumphed, the course of history and, possibly, the names of our Prime Ministers in the past might have been different. That, again, is another way in which the result of avoiding ceasing to be a Member of this House on succession to a peerage could take place. That again, however, has certain difficulties. The hon. Member for Leeds, West (Mr. C. Pannell) drew attention to some of them.
Is the peer who is elected to this House after refusing a writ of summons on ceasing to be elected to have it open to him to accept a writ of summons? Is he to retain throughout the whole time, whether or not he accepts the writ of summons, all the dignities of peerage? In that case, he would have the dignities of peerage without the duties and the right either to vote or to be a Member of this House.
They are all, it seems to me, difficult questions, on which different views may be held, and on which different views have been expressed in our debate today, and that, I think, shows the importance of appointing this Joint Committee of both Houses to consider this matter. I hope, naturally, that it will complete its work very quickly. I do not think it would be right for any of us here to minimise the amount of detailed work which will be involved in the successful accomplishment of the task.
Something was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Kidderminster as to the membership of this Committee. He concluded with an urgent plea that he at least, in view of his hard work, should be made a member of it. No one is more willing than I am to recognise the hard work done by my hon. Friend, but, of course, it does not rest with me to select who should be the members of the Committee. I am sure that both sides of the House will hope not only that they will be able to find their work interesting, but that they will reach a successful and, if possible, unanimous conclusion.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,
That it is expedient that a Joint Committee of both Houses of Parliament be appointed to consider whether any, and if so what, changes should be made in the rights of Peers of England. Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain or of the United Kingdom, and of Peeresses in their own right, to sit in either House of Parliament, or to vote at Parliamentary elections, and whether, and if so under what conditions, a Peer should be enabled to surrender a peerage permanently or for his lifetime or for any less period having regard to the effects and consequences thereof.

To be communicated to the Lords and their concurrence desired thereto.

POST OFFICE

8.32 p.m.

The Postmaster-General (Mr. Reginald Bevins): I beg to move,
That the Postmaster-General be authorised, as provided for in Section 5 of the Post Office Act, 1961, to make payments out of the Post Office Fund in the financial year ending with the 31st March, 1963.
I do not propose to make a long speech tonight on the subject of this Motion, because I hate long speeches and I know that the House does. The Motion derives from last year's Post Office Act, and for reasons which I know will be clear to the whole House I trust that it will be passed this evening.
The Motion refers in terms to my stewardship of the Post Office which has been variously commended and criticised during the past two and a half years. Of course, we all like praise, just as we all dislike criticism, but we have to put up with both. However, I do think that we can fairly say that we in the Post Office in the last two years or so have achieved quite a number of worthwhile changes both in the structure of the Post Office and in the quality of our services.
Our capital investment, which is possibly the best measure of our success or failure, is far higher today than anyone would have dreamed two and a half years ago. That has not come about by a stroke of luck. It has come about in direct consequence of the financial policies which my hon. Friend and I have pursued. I think, too, that we can quite fairly say that our services generally have improved.
I am the last person in the world to be complacent about them, but, after all, post offices are brighter today than they were two and a half years ago, service arrangements are quicker, the level of new telephone installations has been much higher than at any time in the history of the Post Office, and we have made very rapid progress with the expansion of subscriber trunk dialling. Nor have we been idle in the matter of satellite communications. I hope—indeed, I am confident—that we shall assume a prominent rôle in future developments.
I do not intend to say anything at all about the future of broadcasting and television. One or two things were said


about them in this House yesterday. I dace say we shall have a lot to say on those difficult topics before many moons are past. We have, of course, had our little local difficulties with the Post Office unions, or they have had them with me, according to which way one likes to put it. I should like to say a few words about that a little later.
We are discussing the Motion against the background of the recent White Paper on Post Office Prospects. It is true that it is a short Paper, but I think that it gives most of the information that hon. Members require. The Economist described it as "efficient and informative", but, alas, other organs of opinion, and perhaps some hon. Members, may feel rather less complimentary about it than the Economist. As I am not one for running away from criticism, I must say something right away about the major criticisms which have been levelled against us. After all this is one of the rare opportunities that I have of putting our critics on the paths of righteousness.
What do they say? This is all very relevant to the Post Office prospects for the next financial year. In one breath they are apt to say that last year my hon. Friend and I raised certain Post Office charges, that I am milking the public, and making an excessive profit into the bargain. But in the next breath they say that the capital investment of the post Office is paltry and that I ought to be able to meet in full the growing demand for telephones. I am even told that I ought to provide a telephone in every home. All I can say is that I should be a bigger fool than some people take me for if I did that.
I can best illustrate this criticism from one or two things said recently in the Press. I quote the Daily Telegraph, because I like that newspaper and, normally, it is both friendly to the Post Office and well-informed. On 10th March, the Daily Telegraph referred to me as the "Milkmaster-General". Then it said:
Last July, the Postmaster-General told the House of Commons that he would have to raise another £25 million 'in order to maintain the financial soundness of the Post Office'. This he proposed to do by increasing charges. Now a White Paper blandly informs us that

the Post Office will make a profit of £20 million in the current financial year, and £34 million in 1962–63. Whom does Mr. Bevins think he is fooling? For decades, the Post Office has been the only Government Department to make a profit, and that profit, instead of being put to the improvement and extension of services, has been quietly absorbed by the Treasury. No doubt the Chancellor will be grateful for it.
The present Chancellor of the Exchequer would be extremely grateful for it if in fact, he got it, but he does not.
A few days later the Daily Telegraph referred to the comparative fortunes of the American Telephone Company and those of the British Post Office. The clear implication of what was said was that we ace miles behind the American administration. It was pointed out that the American Telephone Company made a profit of £473 million in 1960. This is using statistics as a drunken man uses lamp posts—for support rather than illumination. This figure of £473 million appears from the American company's accounts, to represent profit after historical depreciation and taxation, but before appropriations for dividend and reserve. The comparable figure for the Post Office telephones in 1960–61, if one treats, as one is entitled to, interest payments as the equivalent of dividends, was £64 million.
As the American system is about eight times the size of ours, this is a very close correspondence between the American and British figures. Of course, the Daily Telegraph, I regret to say, also omitted to point out that, in the same year, the American postal service, whose speed of postal delivery is, I am quite sure, a very great incentive to the use of the telephone in the United States, made a loss of over £300 million. Perhaps I may turn now from Fleet Street to the facts. I am all for a free Press, especially if it gets its facts right.
The House will remember all too well that last July we increased certain prices, and that the main increases fell on the residential telephone rentals and other losing services. I confess that I was reluctant to do this because I realised that it would be unpopular. But it was done for the perfectly sound reason that the rentals on residential telephones were not even covering costs, let alone producing an adequate return on capital. Last year, we lost about £2 million on domestic telephone rentals.
If our critics would really have us run the Post Office on an uneconomic basis, then I think that, whoever they may be—whether they be hon. Members or newspapers—'they should plainly say so. Would they really applaud me and my hon. Friend if the Post Office were to end up each financial year "in the red"? Or is it suggested that we are making far too much money at the expense of our customers? Frankly, I do not know. But I must tell the House that, in 1961–62, we expect to make a profit of about £20 million and in the next year a profit of about £34 million.
Of course, these are big sums of money, but the Post Office is a big organisation, and I do not consider them to be excessive. They help to give a prospective return on capital of 7 per cent. in the current financial year, which is about to end, and of about 8 per cent. in the forthcoming financial year.
But not a brass farthing of this goes to the Treasury. Every single penny is ploughed back for the improvement and development of Post Office services in the interests of the general public. It is for this reason, and for no other, that we are able to develop the telephone system, to get more telephones, and to modernise the system to a far greater extent than ever before.
When my hon. Friend and I went to the Post Office at the end of 1959—although it seems longer ago than that—our capital investment was £105 million. I can remember debates in the House when my predecessor, and his, were vigorously criticised because, it was said, this capital investment was inadequate.
In 1961–62, that figure rose to £119 million. Next year, it will advance to £132 million. I am now glad to tell the House that for the year 1963–64 we look forward to spending no less than £150 million on capital account. Thus, in three years, our expenditure on capital account will have risen by no less than 43 per cent. Despite that great advance our net borrowings from the Treasury will have fallen—fallen, not risen—from £37 million in 1960–61 to £30 million in 1963–64. I am quite sure that if other nationalised industries had been able to do that my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer would be very grateful indeed.
This progress—and I make no bones whatever about it—has been made possible because the Post Office has demonstrated its readiness so to organise its financial business that it itself finances, year in and year out, a really substantial proportion of its own capital, and limits its borrowings from the Exchequer.
Ever since I came to this assignment, I have held the view that if our prices were not economic the Post Office would stagnate and the public would suffer. If any hon. Member thinks that the Post Office could increase its capital investment while incurring a loss, or even while making only a moderate profit, I can only say that he is living in a world of dreams.
The only way to do what the Daily Telegraph, what the Post Office Engineering Union, and what millions of people wish the Post Office to do is to provide more capital from our own resources, and that, in turn, means earning a good return on capital. In my view, it is unquestionably right that the oldest of our nationalised industries should try to stand firmly on its own two legs, without contributing to inflationary forces by excessive borrowings from the Exchequer.
I should like to deal very briefly with some of the developments in the telephone world; after all, most of our capital goes on the telephone service. Out of a total expenditure, in 1962–63, of £132 million we expect to spend about £122 million on telecommunications of one kind or another. That is about 11 per cent. more than in the present year.
Here, there are really two main claims to the money. The first is to cater for the many more calls that are now being made and to modernise the system as new techniques develop so that we can give an increasingly efficient service; by automatisation, by the development of S.T.D., by new international cables, and, of course in the longer term, by satellites. That is the first thing.
The second thing is to be able to get more people on to the telephone without their having to go on a long waiting list—

Mr. W. R. Williams: Before the Postmaster-General passes from the satellites, does


what he has just said imply that the Post Office will bear the best part of the burden of the country's effort in that connection?

Mr. Bevins: It is really much too early to answer that question, but I shall deal quite briefly with satellites a little later.
As I was saying, the second thing is to be able to get more people on to the telephone without their having to go on a long waiting list. I have no doubt at all that this would be politically popular in the short term; and, possibly, the amusing snippets in the Daily Express might come to an end—might. That, however, could be done only at the cost of the slowing down of the modernisation of the service, and my own feeling is that the two needs—increasing the telephone service, on the one hand, and providing more telephones, on the other—have to be kept in proper balance. During the next financial year each of those two demands on our capital will take about half our total moneys. I think that that is about the right emphasis.
I should like to say a word about modernisation. In recent years inland trunk traffic has been rising, as the hon. Member for Manchester, Openshaw (Mr. W. R. Williams) well knows, very rapidly. It is now growing at a rate of about 12 per cent. a year, and I am quite sure that that growth will continue. To cope with that we are expanding the trunk system more than ever before. About 3,600 circuits will be added next year; that is, about three times the number that we added in the 1950s. By the end of next year there should be about 37,000 trunk circuits, against 24,000 three years ago.
The greater use of the trunk service is due partly to subscriber trunk dialling, and I have no doubt that the speed of that service is a great boon to the business world. We plan to make this new system available to about 90 per cent. of our customers by 1970, and the development of this service is progressing fairly rapidly. By the end of next year more than 500 exchanges, serving one-third of all our subscribers, will have the advantages of S.T.D.—quicker service, and, generally speaking, cheaper calls.
I have vary little patience with the modern Luddites—and there are some

about today—who object to the modernisation of the telephone system. The fact is that the important thing about a telephone system is speed of answering, and the best way to bring this about is by completely automisation. Some people say that S.T.D. is a bad thing for our customers because it costs them more because it is more expensive. This is wholly untrue. I estimate that the savings to our customers from S.T.D. calls that they will make in 1962–63, compared with the same number of calls at the old rate of tariff, will be no less than £7 million. Already, more than 1 million trunk calls a week, about one-sixth of all trunk calls, are being dialled by subscribers. When I say that the cost of S.T.D. is cheaper to our customers, I am not referring solely to the business community. This applies to the residential subscriber as well.
We are also getting on rapidly with the laying of more local cables which will be capable of providing 300,000 more lines. This will enable us to give a telephone service to a number of people who have had to wait in recent years because of plant shortages. This expansion and the use of existing plant should make it possible for about 450,000 new telephones to be connected in the year—more than 1,200 new telephones every day of the year. I hope that it will please hon. Members on both sides of the House to know that the waiting list for telephones today is only about one-fifth of what it was six years ago, when we had a waiting list of about 250,000. Today it is down to 53,000.
Looking ahead a little, there are two important developments—and they really are important—now under way. The first is the development of electronic exchange systems. For some years we have been working with the principal manufacturers in this country on this new type of telephone exchange, an exchange which will operate much faster even than the present automatic equipment. There are still, I admit, many problems to be solved, but we are making good progress, and later this year we shall be opening the first electronic exchange in Europe to carry public telephone calls.
This will represent a major breakthrough, and we in the Post Office are


determined that Britain shall have the best modern telephone exchanges not only to use here at home but also to market abroad. We are, therefore, giving this work a very high priority indeed, and so, too, are the principal manufacturers who are co-operating with us. I have every confidence that this will succeed, so much so that we have recently reaffirmed the policy of moving straight from the existing automatic system to fully electronic exchanges as early as possible.
The second long-term development is that to which the hon. Member for Openshaw referred namely, satellites. The hon. Member may like to know that present day techniques limit the number of telephone systems which can be carried by long-distance submarine cables to about 100. In the design stage at the moment is a cable which may increase the number of calls taken to about 250, but that is not yet in operation. It seems likely that traffic demands in ten or twenty years' time will be so high that, despite their cost, communication satellites with the enormous capacity they offer—probably 1,000 simultaneous telephone calls and perhaps a television channel—will be used as the backbone of of a worldwide telephone service.
This is something in which we all earnestly hope that the Commonwealth will play its part. I have today welcomed representatives from all the Commonwealth countries who are here to consider Commonwealth policy. We are also co-operating with the Americans in test transmissions through satellites and these experiments will take place later this year.
The full potentialities and the costs of satellite communications are a matter of speculation. Some of this speculation is very gloomy and some very rosy. In this matter we have to keep a sense of proportion. The important thing is to put ourselves in a position technically to take advantage of whatever course seems economically desirable as matters develop. In this sphere there are still a great number of imponderables—let there be no mistake about that. We have not yet had experiments and we may be many years away from a full universal operational system. No one yet knows how many satellites would be required, what they would cost, or how

long they would last. Nor, which is most important, does anyone know what traffic demands would be imposed on such a system. I repeat, the important thing is that we should put ourselves in a position where we have the technical "know-how" to take whatever seems the wisest course in the interests of this country and the Commonwealth.
I do not wish to speak for too long, because I know that several hon. Members wish to speak and I am sure that my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretar, who has a great interest in the postal services, would like to say something about them. I should, however, like to say a word about staff matters. During the last year we have had our troubles. There has been the dispute over pay with the Union of Post Office Workers which led to work-to-rule in January. The campaign was called off at the end of January. Since then we have had discussions about the union's claims, and I have met the leaders of the union on two occasions. There has also been the dispute with the Post Office Engineering Union. This led to a work-to-rule campaign which, I am glad to say, has come to an end. Here, also, I have had talks with the executives of the union about the new wage claims.
All this has been a very unhappy business. I must in all honesty say to the House that in my view—I have never equivocated or wavered in this—the pay pause was right if the inflationary spiral was to be stopped. [An HON. MEMBER: "No."] The hon. Gentleman may disagree, as he is perfectly entitled to, but that was my view and is still my view. That being so, I should act in precisely the same way if I had to relive the unhappy month of January as Postmaster-General.
I do not want to appear to be in any way unctuous or sanctimonious, but this is a matter of public duty. However much the Post Office unions may have differed from me, as they did, I hope that they will recognise, in the course of time, that my motives and my conduct were in the national interest. Of course, I shall do all I humanly can to restore good relations with the unions and the thousands of people who work for the Post Office. But, at the same time, I shall support the incomes policy of the Government.
Before I conclude I should like to pay my tribute not only to hon. Members on both sides of the House who are so consistently friendly to the Post Office in all its affairs, but also to the many thousands of loyal Post Office workers throughout the country—the postmen on their walks in all sorts of weather; the helpful telephone operators; the admirable men and women who look after our sub-offices, and also those who support and work with me at St. Martin's-le-Grand. Of their qualities and their loyalties I could not possibly speak too highly.

9.2 p.m.

Mr. W. R. Williams: I have listened to the Minister with considerable interest. I highly commend him for the brevity of his speech. I hope—I put it no higher than that—that I shall emulate him in so far as that is compatible with doing my duty to the House and to people outside the House. The Minister said many interesting things. I shall not pick them out one by one. I shall cover some of them in the course of my speech.
I am strongly in favour of this country being 100 per cent. with all other countries which wish to develop satellite communication for peaceful purposes. I will leave my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley (Mr. Mason) to deal with this question in more detail, but I thought that I should express my view. I express the view of the Labour Party when I say that we think that there are tremendous possibilities for world good will and peace if this system transcends all other systems of telecommunications which we have at present. As I have said before, in the course of the year this system will be a money spinner, if ever there was one.
This is the first anniversary of the new order of things in the Post Office. During our debates on the Post Office Bill there were many exchanges of view about what real authority the right hon. Gentleman would possess under that Measure. He paraded himself in a new mantle of authority, but I am not too sure that the events of the last twelve months have not proved that many of them are fairly flimsy, possibly made of paper and not much more. The cold

wind of change from the Exchequer has torn some of them to shreds.
The right hon. Gentleman ended his speech with a reference to relations with the staff. In White Papers for many years we had a separate paragraph about the Postmaster-General's relations with the staff and the trade unions representing them. I used to think that those paragraphs were expansive and perhaps a little effusive, but the fact remains that they were there and on the record. It is rather surprising that there is no reference to that relationship in recent White Papers. Perhaps we should not be too surprised about that, because recent events have shown that present relations are of a different character.
Speaking as an old servant of the Post Office and one connected with it for the past forty or forty-five years, I think that the trouble with the Post Office has been that it has been inclined to take the good relations and good will too much for granted and has forgotten the simple fact that a good relationship means giving as well as receiving. In this respect, the year 1961–62 has been the worst in my long recollection. I am very sorry about that, because over the years I helped to build up the good relationship. It was not an easy matter and it meant a good deal of being misunderstood in many quarters in those years. But we persisted and we built up a good relationship.
During the past year, we have had unprecedented actions by the staff and the unions, actions completely foreign to them. But I must say that they were actions which in my opinion, after carefully weighing up the situation, were imposed upon them by a genuine sense of grievance and unfairness by the Government and the right hon. Gentleman in dealing with Post Office workers.
There has been unprecedented action by the right hon. Gentleman himself. He suspended arbitration; he suspended the Joint Productivity Councils; there has been an inordinate delay in seeking ways and means out of this impasse and, above all, there has been a lack of fair treatment and reasonable consideration of staff claims. Had I the time, I would like to show how unfairly Post Office workers have been treated compared with workers in private industry and in some nationalised industries.
The trouble is probably mainly due to the Government's foolish and inequitable policy. The right hon. Gentleman and I have known each other for many years and I have not been one of those severe critics whom he has found in the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Express. There is nothing like one's own family when they start to turn on one for being bitter, vicious and violent. If these were his friends, I would not like to see unfriendly criticisms. With that in mind, I am sorry to say that the right hon. Gentleman has been something of a willing tool of the Treasury. I have not seen any evidence of his having kicked. Other Postmasters-General who have faced a similar situation with Treasury dicta have made their position clear to various Chancellors of the Exchequer, but I am sorry to say that in my long connection with the Post Office I have known few Postmasters-General who have become so unpopular with so many people in such a short time as the right hon. Gentleman.
I must warn him that there was a sense of complacency in his last few sentences. He said that things were going on all right. Will he take it from me in a friendly spirit that among some of the grades of the Post Office, especially the postmen and other basic grades, there is a deep sense of resentment about the way in which they are treated and a sense of dilly-dallying with claims which have been before the right hon. Gentleman since July 1961? I appeal to the right hon. Gentleman to try to get together with these people and to reestablish the friendly relations. I hope he will remember that I said that he must give as well as expect to receive if he is to establish a good relationship.

Mr. Bevins: In a sense I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for what he has said; but he referred to claims—in the plural—which, he said, had been before me since July, 1961. Would he be good enough to tell the House which claims he has in mind?

Mr. Williams: The claim of the Union of Post Office Workers. That claim has been before him since July, 1961.
I should like to deal with the White Paper—Post Office Prospects 1962–63. During the passing of the Post Office Bill, it was recognised, I think, on both sides of the House that if Parliament

was to take a really keen interest in the Post Office—and I am one of those who believe that it should do so—it should be kept very fully and attractively informed of the developments. This White Paper is, I must confess, a distinct improvement on some that we have had in the past, but in certain directions it is not as informative as it could be. The Postmaster-General has not enlarged upon certain factors in it.
Paragraph 2 deals with growth of business. That is rather an Irishism because there has not been much growth. We hope that there will be next year. No reason is given why there has not been much growth and no explanation to justify hopeful feelings in the future. I will leave it there. Paragraph 3 deals with staff. It is an important paragraph, but it is given only four lines. It could not have been much shorter. The table in the Annex is an improvement on the way in which the figures used to be given. I would suggest, however, that from now on there should be another column or two columns showing how the figures compare with those of the previous year. I do not know how we are to understand the figures given unless there are comparisons. Like speed, which has to be related to something, I think that we ought to have the figures related to those of the previous year, showing either an increase or a decrease.
The White Paper says nothing about the staffing in the various grades, whether it is up to authorised establishment or below. In other words, it does not say whether any difficulties have been experienced in recruiting, which I understand there have been. It does not say whether recruits are forthcoming to the basic grades, who are not only suitable for the work that they will have to perform in those grades but suitable also for upgrading into some of the higher grades, such as the supervisory grades. I will give the information which I have obtained and which I hope is correct. I have taken every step to see that it is correct. My information is that in London at present there is a shortage of nearly 1,000 postmen. I understand that there are shortages also in a number of the provincial centres.
I am inclined to believe that there has been a deterioration in the quality of the service given by the Post Office in


London. I say this from my own observations and from what has been reported to me. There are, for instance, failures to clear mails in the proper time. I will deal later with some of the reasons for these shortcomings. I understand that the Post Office is spending about £1,500 a week on attracting recruits. Many applicants turn down the job soon after taking it, and I have been asking myself why this should be. It is a serious matter. Are the wages offered so low that the men reject them out of hand, or are the advertisements misleading so that although people are told what is the maximum rate they are unaware of the lower rates?
The weekly wage of a postman aged 21 in Central London is £10 9s. 0d. Outside London it is 9 guineas. I ask the right hon. Gentleman in all seriousness, how does he think he is going to recruit men into this important service when the wage is so far below the national average industrial wage? I am pleased to know of the right hon. Gentleman's attention to the mechanical side of the service, but I would point out that he has a moral obligation to attend also to the human material in his charge.
I had thought of dealing with the paragraphs relating to buildings, but I will say no more than that I am glad to hear that it is proposed to start 65 new post offices and 50 sorting and delivery offices, and that there is to be a programme of replacement and modernisation at other offices. It is very difficult for hon. Members to assess the real value of a project without some information about the size of the problem and the arrears of work which have to be recovered. I do not know whether an assessment of that sort is possible in future White Papers, but it is certainly difficult to know whether the right hon. Gentleman is doing a good job if we only have the sort of statement which is presented to us on this occasion. If he intends to start in earnest on the post offices in Liverpool and Manchester alone, he has a very big job in hand.
I should like to deal with paragraph 7 relating to mechanisation. I have visited some of the sorting offices where experiments are being conducted with this mechanisation, and I should like to say how grateful I am to the Postmaster

General and the Assistant Postmaster-General for their assistance and co-operation as well as to the post office officials who have accompanied me, and to the local staffs who have shown me all the intricacies of these new machines. I have been impressed, and indeed staggered. I never knew that a sorting office could look so much like a factory. It is an improvement and does much to meet the needs of modern times. The modern sorting office looks like a factory in every respect except one, and that becomes apparent when one asks what the personnel are being paid in the sorting offices. There is a big difference between the wages which are paid to them and those paid to the factory employees. The Post Office can claim full credit for what it is doing in the introduction of mechanisation connected with sorting, segregation, distribution, conveying and so forth.
The right hon. Gentleman has attacked one of our great allies today and said that all is not well in the American postal service. I do not attack anybody as a rule, and I do not attack allies, but I must say that, after having spent some time in the United States about three years ago visiting many post offices there, I am convinced that what can be seen here is much to the credit of the British Post Office. I did not see anything approaching what I have seen in our own post offices in the way of development, expansion and mechanisation.
At the end of my visits to post offices in this country, I asked myself this question. Where does experimentation finish and where does putting the thing into operation begin? Many years ago, I had a long experience in the telegraph service. I admit that these decisions are very difficult to make because scientific development is so rapid nowadays that what looks like the finished article today is almost outdated in a few years, but an enormous amount of capital was expended on the telegraph system and half of it was wasted because excellent systems were outdated almost before they were in universal use.
I suggested yesterday that, sometimes, the best becomes the enemy of the good or even of the very good. If we are to have the benefit of the money we are putting into this work, someone must


at some time consider the question of when to decide to apply our knowledge and new ideas in service.
What I regard as one of the big problems which the right hon. Gentleman must tackle soon concerns the mail service in general and the handling and transit of mails. There is no reference to this in the White Paper apart from a mention of an experiment in the transit of mails between points in rural East Anglia. I am very grateful for a sight of the report of the study group which has been considering this matter. It is an excellent report. I know well many of the people who put their names to it and I respect their opinions, but I must say that if I were studying this report for the first time now I should come to conclusions rather different from those which I reached when it was first brought to my notice a few months ago.
The conclusion of the study group, as I understand it, is that the basic arrangements for handling and conveying letter mails are sound and that the present rail-based system should meet most requirements for as far ahead as we can see. About twelve months ago, I should, I think, have subscribed unhesitatingly to that view. I am not sure that I do so now. Since then, revolutionary changes have been proposed in the general policy for British Railways and we have seen the advent of the very efficient but ruthless executioner, Dr. Beeching.
The Post Office faces a problem here. Dr. Beeching is a tough protagonist. At present, he has a one-track mind. All he is thinking about is making the railways economically sound, and, as far as I can judge, he does not care two hoots what happens to the customers or the general public in the meantime. I suggest that the situation demands serious rethinking in the Post Office not only at administrative level but at high ministerial level, too, if our transport for the postal service is to be adequate for more than just the big provincial centres and London. I do not have time to deal extensively with many of the arguments I had thought out, but I must refer to the closing of branch lines on a large scale, for this presents quite a problem. It is, however, a problem which the Post Office can overcome, perhaps more easily than some would believe.
The right hon. Gentleman is making an experiment in East Anglia and I see no reason why, concurrently with that, he cannot also make similar experiments in rural Wales and Scotland. After all, they have separate regional directors and I see no reason why experiments could not be conducted there now and so save time later on. Even when the Commission does not intend to close lines it seems obvious that diesel trains will be utilised. These trains are inadequately equipped or unsuited to deal with postal traffic on fairly long journeys.
This is not confined to branch lines or rural areas. As I understand the problem, Dr. Beeching has a plan for fast passenger services between London and the main provincial centres. He intends to have non-stop or limited-stop trains and I understand that the railway authorities may consider that having too many mails on some of these fast trains may turn out to be a handicap to them and that they might, as a result, make things difficult for the Post Office.
Dr Beeching must be told by the right hon. Gentleman—and perhaps by the Cabinet—that the Post Office is one of his best customers, that it is an integral part of the communications system and that the railways and the Post Office must co-ordinate more than ever to make the system more effective than it is. I make that point because I sincerely feel that we are in danger now of two Government Departments working at cross purposes and that, as a result, the railways and the Post Office will suffer.
I will not deal with the gyro system but leave that to another time. I must, however, refer to the "Telecoms", for I regard the Report as encouraging in many ways. I will not repeat many of the remarks the Minister made, nor am I challenging them. The position shows, though, that a substantial surplus has been yielded during the past year and that another substantial surplus will be achieved in the next financial year.
When the Minister announced the increased charges last July people got the impression—I think it is fair to say this—that wage increases had, to some extent, at any rate, been responsible for the increases the Minister announced. The White Paper hardly confirms this.
It points, rather, to what I regard as an insatiable desire to provide a very large proportion of Post Office capital expenditure from its internal resources.
I do not dissent from the Post Office getting as much as it can from its own resources. I have said that frequently, but that should be done within reason. I am strongly opposed to it being the sole objective of the policy of the Post Office. In past years the Post Office was satisfied with just over 50 per cent. In 1961–62 it was 69 per cent. and now, according to the White Paper, if my calculations are correct, it is about 73 per cent.
Three points must be made regarding this. Firstly, is there no ceiling to this desire? There is a danger of the present customers having to bear an undue and oppressive burden for benefits which will accrue to posterity. Secondly, there is a danger of the social obligations of the Post Office being further squeezed out, as is happening on the railways. I am sure that the Postmaster-General has no wish to avoid his social obligations with regard to this service. Thirdly—and this is important—as a result, there will be a blocking of the expansion of schemes which are in themselves likely to be very necessary and, perhaps, extremely profitable. For example, the sooner the subscriber trunk dialling system is brought into universal use the bigger will be the profit accruing to the Post Office.
I now turn to capital expenditure on fixed assets. In 1960–61 this rose from £100·7 million to £105·4 million, an increase of £4·7 million. In the present year it has increased by £13·6 million to a total of £119 million. At first flush that seems to be very good. But is it as good as it looks? It includes upward price charges. That is reasonable. But it also includes the capitalisation of certain items. I will not bother to go into them now. The Postmaster-General knows what they are as well as I do. I estimate that, in real terms, the increase is about £8·4 million.
The Postmaster-General and I had a bit of cross talk over the Table yesterday about the telephone waiting list, I agree with him that rapid strides have been made in the last few years in this "matter, but I am not sure that the

situation is as satisfactory as he tried to lead us to believe. This is what he once said:
I am determined to prevent the number of those waiting for new exchanges or more cables, at present about 50,000, from rising".
Perhaps the Assistant Postmaster-General will tell us whether the number of those on the waiting list is under or over 50,000. The Postmaster-General continued:
I want to reach the position when those unfortunate enough to have to wait can be within sight of service within twelve months and in straightforward cases with a service right away.
Perhaps the hon. Lady will tell us how near the right hon. Gentleman is to fulfilling that objective.
I thought that the right hon. Gentleman put his chest out when he said this:
I am even less complacent about the telephone waiting list than the P.O.E.U. and the Daily Express, and I hope that we shall be able to do better.
I do not know what the Dally Express has done to come under fire as much as it has in recent weeks. Has the right hon. Gentleman achieved his objective?
The Times of 7th March had something to say about this matter. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will not attack The Times merely because I refer to it. He has attacked all the newspapers except the Daily Herald. This is what the The Times said:
Among all the forecasts of expansion and technical innovation there is one sad confession of no progress. The waiting list for telephones was not reduced last year and nothing is said about the prospects for next year.
Yesterday, the right hon. Gentleman led us to believe that we are doing all right in this sphere. There is an obligation on the Assistant Postmaster-General to tell us how we have misunderstood the right hon. Gentleman, because, as I see it, The Times is quite right when it states that we have not made much progress this year. The White Paper is silent on this issue.
The demand for telephones is increasing faster than ever. About 1 million residential subscribers are still obliged to share lines, which they do not want to do. I do not propose to make comparisons with other countries, but I want to say a few words about subscriber trunk dialling. I read with great interest a fine article on subscriber trunk dialling


by a Mr. J. M. Harper in the spring issue of "Telecommunications". I do not know this gentleman from Adam, but he has been writing most intelligently and knowledgeably on the subject of S.T.D. He comes to these conclusions and it is right that the public should know them. Briefly, they are as follows. I note with surprise, but with satisfaction, that 74 per cent. of the people who are now connected with S.T.D. prefer it to the old system. They think that it is quicker and cheaper.
Mr. Harper says, secondly, that the service has proved efficient and popular, that it has given a stimulus of 20 per cent. to trunk calls and that callers find S.T.D. procedure quite simple. Perhaps the Minister will refer that to his hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (Mr. Gough) after what he said last night. Mr. Harper says, in conclusion, that there has not been any marked effect on subscribers' bills. The bulk of subscribers who write to me are under a misapprehension. In future, I shall simply refer all my correspondents on that subject to Mr. Harper.
I accept all those conclusions. Therefore, I am bitterly disappointed to learn that there has not been as rapid an expansion as was forecast. It looks as if there has been a slight slowing down of the programme. According to Command Paper 973, 1960–61, about 40 per cent. of telephones should have S.T.D. by March, 1963. According to the White Paper, we are looking forward to only 33 per cent. That seems to me to be a rake's progress. It does not show much forward-looking initiative.
The Postmaster-General may remember that my hon. Friend the Member for Wood Green (Mrs. Butler) and I made representations to him in regard to the charges for old people. The right hon. Gentleman was good enough to meet me privately to consider ways and means of administering any changes. I have not heard from him—I do not know whether my hon. Friend has—and I should like to know before long what is happening about that.
I am disturbed about the Liverpool A.T.C. position and the transfer of work to Essex. Like the right hon. Gentleman, I have been connected with Liverpool for many years. I know of the tremendous work that the A.T.C. has done in conjunction with the Post Office

in the development of the telephone service. Liverpool has held a proud place in regard to this association in the development of telephones.
Correspondence which has been shown to me by my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Exchange (Mrs. Braddock) indicates that there will be substantial redundancy. I have read the report of the Merseyside Development Corporation as published in the Liverpool Echo last night, to the effect that unemployment on Merseyside is double tine national average and well above the average in the rest of the North-West Region. I appeal to the right hon. Gentleman to reconsider the position and to see whether the long connection of A.T.C. with telephone traffic cannot be sustained and maintained. I shall be obliged to him if he does so.

Mr. Bevins: I told the hon. Lady the Member for Liverpool, Exchange (Mrs. Braddock) last week that redundancy at the Strowger main works in Edge Lane, Liverpool, was not due to the removal of telephone contracts by the Post Office from Liverpool to anywhere else but was due to rationalisation and reorganisation of which the Post Office does not have control. I assure the hon. Member, however, that we are watching the position carefully from all points of view, because I am just as much—perhaps even more—concerned with the employment situation in Liverpool.

Mr. Williams: I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that assurance, but there is a subsequent letter since he gave that assurance to my hon. Friend, and it seems to indicate that the position is not quite as he thought it was. Maybe there was a misunderstanding. I leave the matter there and accept the assurance.
I say, finally, that I wish the service well. Whatever difficulties have been experienced during the year, and there have been plenty, I hope they will not recur during 1962–63 and that all the big schemes which the Post Office has in mind will go on smoothly to the benefit of the public, the Post Office and the workers in the industry.

9.40 p.m.

Mr. Philip Holland: I am sure the hon. Gentleman the Member for Manchester, Openshaw (Mr. W. R. Williams) will understand if I do not


follow him to Liverpool or deal with some of the very broad matters of general policy which he covered so well. I want to deal first with one or two matters relating to the most important post office in the United Kingdom and subsequently have a very brief look at one or two aspects of the more general picture.
Basically, most of the difficulties for both staff and public at the Acton Post Office arise from the inadequacies and unsuitability of the building and the whole of the available accommodation for sales and for sorting, and till something quite drastic is done to the building it seems likely that I shall continue to be a thorn in the side of my right hon. Friend. There are three possible alternatives. The first is to build an entirely new postal and sorting office somewhere else; the second is to build a sorting office somewhere else and to redesign the existing building so that it can provide a modern sales unit; and the third is to extend the existing building in the only direction possible on that site—which is upwards.
In case my right hon. Friend imagines that I am trying to make a mountain out of a molehill unnecessarily, let me remind him that Acton's post office serves the biggest industrial area in the whole of the Paddington district which, as he knows, stretches from W.2 to W.14. Much more than that, it serves the heaviest concentration of industry south of the Midlands. It also serves the thriving, bustling modern community which inevitably goes with such an industrial concentration. Having said this, let me hasten to add that I know that my right hon. Friend is aware of the unsuitability of the present building and is seeking a solution to the problem, and today I am just trying to ensure that he does not relax his efforts.
The accommodation problem is one of long standing, and undoubtedly the solution will be a medium or long-term solution. That I realise and accept. In the meantime attempts have been made to provide a short-term relief for staff and public alike by providing in front of the counter new machines to sell id., ½d. and 3d. stamps and to sell 2s. books of stamps. These 2s. books of stamps have proved to be very popular indeed in

Acton. I should like to suggest that the provision of a stamped stationery machine would be a useful addition in Acton, and, of course, a machine giving change would be invaluable.
Administrative modifications have also eased the congestion at the counter to a certain extent though not to any large extent. For example, the payment of pensions on Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays instead of on Fridays only as formerly, has eased a little of the congestion. Some of our enlightened industrialists have also helped to reduce congestion at the counter by telephoning their requirements half an hour or so before sending their messengers, and by calling back after depositing their franking meters so that these can be attended to during the quiet period of the day. I mention this in the hope that other industrialists may follow the excellent example of Acton's paragons of virtue.
I am advised that the real answer to the frustration of customers in queues and the strain on the staff is to have all-purpose service at each counter position. At present in Acton Post Office there are twelve counter positions, of which six are devoted to the savings bank, pensions and licences, and the other six to the sale of stamps. Queues are heavy, particularly in the lunch hour and the afternoon, especially the late afternoon, because this office is open until half-past six.
It is generally felt, from the staff's point of view, that quite apart from a reduction in the size of queues, and the elimination of queues during parts of the day with the attendant elimination of frustration, all-purpose working tends to spread more evenly the strain of counter work. At present the man who deals all day long with savings banks and pensions work is under a heavier mental strain than the man who is carrying out the almost mechanical process of selling stamps. Although they take it in turns in different positions on the counter they do it for a long stretch at a time and it would be more convenient and less of a mental strain if they could intersperse this work with the more mechanical type of work each day.
Unfortunately, there is insufficient safe accommodation for all-purpose work all


day on the counter in Acton. I hope that my right hon. Friend will see whether anything can be done about this. It may well boil down to lack of space to provide the safe accommodation required. If it does, then it is another reason for tackling the problem of general accommodation with vigour. Loose-leaf balancing with the aid of a Burroughs machine has been introduced in the post office and this helps to simplify accounting. It is much appreciated.
On the sorting office side in Acton there appears to be little that can be done to effect a major improvement in the limited space available, but I am advised that it might be possible to effect considerable economy in the distribution of telephone directories. This is general to London as a whole, but I should like to refer to it as I saw the problem and had it explained to me in Acton. At present each subscriber receives a local telephone directory. In addition, about 8,000 general London directories have to be distributed four times a year. I believe that for many of the local private subscribers the local directory is enough. They rarely need to refer to the larger directory and, therefore, probably they do not need it renewed quite so frequently as it is at present. Those who use the larger directories regularly would have no objection to writing their names and addresses on a pre-paid postcard slipped in at the beginning of each volume. They could post this to obtain a regular supply. In this way it would be known at least that the directories issued would be used and it might well effect a 50 per cent. saving, unless of course the advertising revenue from the present distribution enables my right hon. Friend to make a substantial profit.
To turn to more general subjects and to set them in the context of present conditions; in the industrial and scientific fields generally we are embarked in this country on what I think are the most fascinating and exciting developments that have taken place since the introduction of mass-producing machinery, and since the evolution of the factory system to replace the old cottage industries at the end of the eighteenth century and early in the nineteenth century.
The visible signs of this great new industrial and scientific revolution that are upon us are firstly, the growing accent on automation in our factories and offices, bringing in its train more leisure and the means to enjoy it; secondly, the development of atomic energy and space research with all its immense potentialities for good, bringing great possibilities of abundant cheap power and communications; thirdly, a speed-up in transport causing the world to shrink so fast that before the end of this century New York may well be as near to London in time as Paris is now.
Is this revolution reflected in the operations and plans of the Post Office? In spite of the pessimistic view that the hon. Member for Openshaw put forward—though towards the end of his speech he was quite optimistic about the future—I believe that the Post Office represents the modern trend. I am sure that anyone who has been to the Dollis Hill Research Station in the last two years will have seen something of a development of mail handling machinery aimed at reducing costs and increasing efficiency.
In this context, it might be helpful if we had some information on the experiments being conducted at Luton and Norwich. I have been interested to learn, in my private researches, of the wholly mechanised, push-button parcel sorting installations at Leeds, handling 10,000 parcels an hour. I should like to know more about this. The hon. Member for Openshaw suggested that we should have more such information to excite our imagination, so that we all would take a keener interest in Post Office methods. The machinery at Leeds is certainly the sort of thing which would interest many hon. Members. I shall not catalogue the whole range of new machines, but the evidence is there that the Post Office is in step with the development of automation. I urge my right hon. Friend to ensure that the bold and progressive management of which he and his staff are capable keeps the Post Office in the forefront of advance.
The second visible sign of the twentieth century revolution is that the Post Office is already involved operationally in space research. We have heard of future plans and we know that an experimental station near the Lizard


is being built. My right hon. Friend must ensure that his Department plays a leading role in establishing a commercially sound satellite communications system.
The transmission of trans-Atlantic television pictures, and, indeed, of trans-world television pictures, should also, I agree, assist in making the world a smaller place and in encouraging greater familiarity and understanding between nations. The big speed up in international transport which the development of supersonic aircraft presages calls for greater speed in international telephonic communications. The Post Office, as my right hon. Friend has told us, is well aware of this need.
We understand that the Post Office has plans to open up for London subscribers direct dialling to Paris, and that these are well advanced. We use various initials, and presumably the present S.T.D. system will become "subscribers international dialling", and we will call it "SID". Such expansions will play their part in more personal contacts with peoples of other nations. This is particularly important as trade barriers come down, and will be especially so if we reach a trading arrangement with the Common Market.
It must be apparent from what I have said that, whilst I applaud the progressive and imaginative reaction of my hon. Friend and his Department to the stimulus of the second half of the twentieth century, I feel far from satisfied with the facilities available in Acton. I believe that only the best is good enough for the public and the staff in Acton, and I feel that the Crown post office we have there now falls a very long way below the best.

Sir Peter Roberts: What about Sheffield?

Mr. Holland: I am sorry to disagree with my hon. Friend, but I am speaking about the most important Crown post office in the country. To reject this Motion would prevent my right hon. Friend from spending part of the £20 million on a new post office in Acton. As I have every confidence that he will not neglect Acton in the future as it has tended to be neglected in the past, I warmly support the Motion.

9.55 p.m.

Mr. David Weitzman: I am in no sense of the term an authority on the working of the Post Office, and only venture to take part in this debate because I want to raise a point about Premium Bonds and the prizes which are drawn, for the administration of which the Postmaster-General is responsible. My interest arises from a letter written to me by a constituent, the contents of which I have communicated to the Minister.
The father of my constituent was the holder of a number of Premium Bonds, one of which was selected by "Ernie" for a £25 prize. Unfortunately, the holder died shortly before the beginning of the month when the number was drawn. His widow, who took out the Letters of Administration, was not in very good circumstances. She could well have appreciated that £25, but was, apparently, unable to obtain the money, although the bond belonging to her husband had won the prize. She could not have the prize because the holder had died before the first day of the month, and I understand that the money went into the pool to be drawn again later.
I have looked at the conditions on the application form issued by the Post Office in connection with Premium Savings Bonds, and the sixth condition reads:
A Bond will be eligible for inclusion in the first draw held after the expiration of three months beginning on the first day of the month following the month in which it was purchased, provided that it has not been repaid before the expiration of those three months, and (subject to the provisions of paragraph 14 below) that the registered holder has not died before the expiration of the first two of those three months. After a Bond has qualified for its first draw it will be included in each succeeding monthly draw, unless it has been repaid before the first day of the month in which the draw is held or (subject to the provisions of paragraph 14 below) the registered holder has died before the first day of the month preceding the month in which the draw is held.
Delightful language; I read very word, I suppose that the ordinary person is expected to understand it. What it comes to is that if the person has died before the first day of the month he cannot be awarded a prize if his number is drawn.
Condition No. 14 is a little simpler. It states:
The Treasury reserve the right by giving not less than three months notice in the London, Edinburgh and Belfast Gazettes… to vary the rate of interest"—
I think that 14 (c) is the material part. It states:
… to vary the provisions of paragraph 6 above insofar as they relate to the eligibility of a Bond for inclusion in a draw after the death of the registered holder.…
Presumably, therefore, the time may be varied.
I have discussed the matter, as being of some interest, with a number of people. None of them seems to be aware of this provision with regard to the death of the person before the first day of the month, and many holders of these certificates are quite unaware of it, too. This is a matter of some public importance. It is bad enough for some of us who have these bonds and never seem to have the good fortune to have "Ernie" select our numbers, but it is hard when a number is drawn and the holder has, unfortunately, died before the first day of the month, and, as a result, the next-of-kin cannot draw the prize.
What is the authority for this prohibition? I have gone to some trouble over the matter. I have looked at Section 43 of the Finance Act, 1956, which amended the National Loans Act of 1939, so as to make possible the issue of Premium Savings Bonds consequent on the announcement of the Prime Minister, who was then Chancellor of the Exchequer, when he introduced these bonds.
The detailed conditions for the purchase and holding of these bonds are prescribed in Statutory Instrument 1657 of 1956, known as the Premium Savings Bonds Regulations. Those Regulations have been amended from time to time. I have diligently and carefully searched through the whole of the Regulations, but there is not a single word that refers to this condition with regard to the death of the holder. There is no regulation which authorises withholding the prize money in the way indicated.
It may be that the Minister takes the view that he is entitled to do this under the conditions for the issue of these bonds. It is obvious from paragraph 14

that the right is reserved to vary the conditions of the draw. I ask the Minister whether this rule was made by him, and if it was, why it was made, and what was his authority for making it?
After all, if a person has an investment, on his death the interest on it goes to his next-of-kin, or to the person entitled to it under the terms of his will. If there were a bond drawing interest, presumably in the same way the bond itself and the interest on it would go to the next-of-kin or to the person entitled to it under his will. It seems somewhat unfair that because a person dies before the first day of the month his next-of-kin, or the person entitled to under his will should not in the same way get the prize money.
I hope that some consideration will be given to the justice of this matter, and if the present system is deemed to be unfair it may be possible to vary this matter in the way prescribed in paragraph 14 of the application form.

10.2 p.m.

Mr. A. P. Costain: After an all-night sitting, I do not wish to delay the House for more than a few moments. There are two points I wish to make. First, Folkestone was one of the first post offices to have an all-service counter, and I congratulate the Postmaster-General on the policy that he is pursuing.
Secondly, I should like to make a special plea on behalf of old people. Possession of a telephone is a matter of real concern to elderly people and I hope that my right hon. Friend will remember their needs. S.T.D. may be good and cheaper than the present system, but it is not so for those who have teen-age children or children in love, because a telephone then costs a lot more.
Home safety is a matter to which I have given considerable thought, and I therefore offer my right hon. Friend this suggestion. If he is not able to install telephones which can be used to make normal calls, will my right hon. Friend consider installing emergency bells which elderly people can ring to request immediate assistance when they find themselves in trouble?

10.3 p.m.

Mr. Harry Randall: I am sure that the earlier business was of great importance to the House, but I would have very much welcomed the opportunity to discuss the Post Office earlier in the day. However, we can take full advantage of this opportunity because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Openshaw (Mr. W. R. Williams) said, this is the anniversary of the new dispensation. I have one or two things to say to the Postmaster-General, but before doing so I offer him my congratulations on what he has done so far.
All postmen very much appreciated the decision to abolish the Christmas Day delivery of mail. I was particularly interested in this decision, because I remember on many occasions being dragged out early on Christmas morning to deal with the Christmas mail. The right hon. Gentleman's decision was warmly welcomed everywhere.
With a profit of just over £20 million I suppose that we are entitled to say, "Another good year." The right hon. Gentleman was quite right to say that there have been considerable developments. There has been an expansion of business and an increase is reflected in most of the services. The information may be found in the Report and Accounts, Cmnd. 1521.
I was pleased that my hon. Friend the Member for Openshaw drew attention to the omission of any reference to staff relations. I do not understand this omission. For years there have been two for three paragraphs referring to this subject in the Report. I checked the 1958–59 Report and found these words:
The year was distinguished by continued co-operation between the Post Office and the trade unions.
That was not exceptional, it has always been so. What is exceptional is that this year there is no reference to staff relations. That is all the more regrettable because of what has been happening and because staff relations have been thoroughly bad. We ought to admit it.
My hon. Friend the Member for Openshaw and I spent a number of years in the Post Office service. My hon. Friend made a tremendous contribution to the welfare of the service and I tried to do

my share. This year there have been strained relations and a break-down in relations with the unions. I agree with my hon. Friend that this has been due mainly to Government foolishness and also because the Postmaster-General has too often maintained the view held by the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
I remember that when Mr. Wilfred Paling was Postmaster-General there was a wage claim discussion and that, according to Civil Service practice, what was termed corresponding points, or rates of assimilation, were applied. This meant that a 5s. increase would be received over a period of three years. Perhaps the first shilling would be paid the first year and the second shilling the following year and the remainder in the third year. Mr. Paling, who was an exminer, could not understand why the 5s. was not paid at once, and he fought with the Chancellor of the Exchequer on behalf of the grade in the Post Office which was affected. That sort of action has been lacking on the part of the Postmaster-General. I should have liked to have seen him stand up for the Post Office staff and not necessarily agree with everything, even from the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
During next year the Postmaster-General should endeavour to rebuild the good understanding which formerly existed in the Post Office. I hope that every effort will be made to rebuild what I believe to be the finest system of staff consultation in the country. There is nothing like it in any industry. Mr. Ron Smith, the General Secretary of the Union of Post Office Workers, said again and again during the period of the work-to-rule that he derived no satisfaction from what was happening. I do not derive any satisfaction either from having to refer to the difficulties of the last twelve months.
What has happened to the Report this year? It contains no reference to public relations. This subject has been mentioned in previous years. Previously, a whole section of the Report has been devoted to public relations, including customer surveys, exhibitions, and Post Office advisory committees. I am sure that the Minister will agree that the advisory committees make an important contribution in bringing about an understanding of Post Office work. Yet the


Report this year does not mention these bodies. I regret this very much, especially as this is the first year of the new status of the Post Office. Does it mean that, with its new commercial freedom, the Post Office is not interested in public relations?
On the Second Reading of the Post Office Bill last year the Minister said this:
It is, I think, a fact that, at present, the public is curiously ill-informed about many of our facilities and services.… We need much more publicity and much better public information."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 25th January, 1961; Vol. 633, c. 181–2.]
It may be a slip that these matters are not mentioned this year, but I hope that it will not happen again.
I must confess my disappointment with the White Paper, Post Office Prospects. Incidentally, last year's White Paper, The Status of the Post Office, cost 6d., whereas this year's White Paper costs 8d. Each White Paper has seven pages. There is very little difference in the contents. These are scrappy documents. They do not measure up to what we want them to do. I remind the Minister that we were given an assurance in Committee on the Bill. My hon. Friend the Member for Openshaw drew attention to the need for more attractive publications. The Assistant Postmaster-General said that the Post Office would endeavour to give us lucid and attractive reports. She said that if possible the Department would issue a popular version which people could understand. I have not seen a popular version and I am not very happy about the two documents we have received.
I have another criticism. Apart from the fact that the document is scrappy, its content is not what I should like it to be. Why has the general pattern of the document been Changed? Somebody at Post Office headquarters has been having a lot of fun throwing the mud about. If there is one thing which makes a document valuable when it is issued from year to year, it is that people have the opportunity of making comparisons. I invite the Postmaster-General and the Assistant Postmaster-General to go through the two documents. It is very difficult to compare one year with another. This is not helpful. I should not like to believe that this has been done deliberately. I should

not like to think that there is an effort at Post Office headquarters deliberately to hide information.
I do not like the presentation of the statistics. It is difficult to find the number of established staff, the numbers in the grade, how many temporaries are employed, and so on. Far more information about the staff should be given. The presentation of the Civil Estimates has been revised for this year and statistics about civil servants are set out quite separately, although those for Post Office workers are excluded. The Post Office Act provided that Post Office workers would still be civil servants, and the information given about them should be no different from that given about other civil servants. I invite the right hon. Gentleman to reconsider the presentation of this document and to try to improve it. But I hope that, having improved it, he will let that be the pattern for future years, because changing the pattern makes it extremely difficult to follow the information and see what progress has been made.
The White Paper obscures what I believe is becoming a serious problem of recruitment. I have no desire to exaggerate, but in my days we staffed the main grade, postmen, either from boy messengers or from ex-Regulars. The boy messengers came in to make a career and then went right through the Service. They and the ex-Regulars remained in the service and could be relied upon to remain. One of the things which is emerging from the present situation is that far too many young men are leaving the Post Office. I have some figures of which the right hon. Gentleman will be aware because they have been given to him from another quarter. The Union of Post Office Workers took a return from 60 offices from six regions covering all sorts of towns and cities, large and small, and rural areas. This survey revealed that many young men were leaving the Post Office.
This is a serious matter for the Post Office. The right hon. Gentleman knows that after the war reallocation was introduced to give young men an opportunity to progress through the grades. If young men do not stay on in the service, it will be difficult to fill the higher posts—postmen higher grade, postal and telegraph officers, and so on. The right hon.


Gentleman knows the problem of postal and telegraph officers in London. The limited and open competition will not give the staff we want for very important grades in the Post Office. The supervising posts are also dependent upon the basic grades and we are losing far too many of the young men who could eventually occupy them. There is no doubt that wages in outside industry are a factor for they are much more attractive than those in the Post Office, particularly in large industrial towns. It is extremely important to hold on to our young men. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will not be the Postmaster-General when the problem emerges, but it will emerge and I am sure that those in the Post Office who will have to deal with the problem are very troubled.
It is a little difficult to assess the value of the building taking place during the next year, but I believe that it is not as fast as we would like. There are far too many offices throughout the country which are no credit to the Post Office, especially when they are compared with multiple stores and groceries and other shops. I am somewhat troubled that many of our post offices are too slowly, if at all, going through a transformation.
I had the privilege of serving on the Estimates Committee when, last year, we dealt with the subject of school buildings. We had an opportunity to study the work done by organisations of consortia in which a number of local authorities got together so that a building could be erected very quickly. Many of us saw these schools being developed. The buildings are adaptable for meeting a number of conditions and the Committee said that other Departments should be considering this form of building—the War Office, hospitals, and so on, and, I think, the Post Office.
Growth is a very important matter to the Post Office. Populations move and this has a great effect on certain post office accommodation and telephone exchange accommodation. Sometimes it is not the right thing to put up buildings which will last for a hundred years. They do not really meet the situation. I hope that the Post Office will look very seriously at the method that has been adopted in our school building programme.
Another matter is the siting of post offices which provide counter services. I have been watching Questions on the Order Paper over the last few months, and I find that there are many hon. Members who are concerned about sub-offices. They feel that their constituents are not getting the counter services to which they are entitled. Almost all have raised the issue of distance, remoteness, the number and allocation of houses, hills and steep gradients, mothers with young children and old age pensioners.
As I have watched these Questions on the Order Paper, and listened to the Assistant Postmaster-General's replies, I have felt much sympathy with her. I have this problem in my own constituency, but I will not trouble the hon. Lady with it tonight. I think that the problem is larger than can be dealt with on an individual basis. Nevertheless, my constituents are suffering. They have steep gradients to climb and long distances to go. They live in the tough North and not in the soft South, and that makes a lot of difference when mothers have to push perambulators uphill and for some distances.
I do not want now to develop my own constituency problems, neither do I want to develop the problem of the Crown office versus the sub-office, which is a very contentious one. I plead for consideration to be given to certain parts of the country. There are large areas where the sub-offices serve very well. In some rural areas, not all, but the majority, the old sub-office is suitable. There are some vast housing estates and I do not doubt that sub-offices or Crown offices have been built there. Those living in large council housing estates are usually well served.
I am concerned with the urban areas where small council estates have been put up and where the only sub-offices available are those which were sited many years ago and have no relation at all to the build-up of the community—in fact, sub-offices which had nothing like the business to deal with that they have today. The business which the Post Office has had to deal with since 1945 is quite different from that of the old days. The social legislation which has been put on the Statute Book means that nearly all the post offices are serving different types of customers from those


in the past. Today, they have to deal with mothers with children's allowances and old-age pensioners. Most of the sub-offices are very badly sited in the areas to which I have drawn attention.
I ask whether the time has not arrived for a study of this situation. I ask for nothing more than that. I believe that this problem must be known in the regions. I feel that it is wrong to bargain with the Assistant Postmaster-General in the way that we are accustomed to do, when we speak of constituents who live a mile away from

a post office, people who have to climb steep gradients to get there, old-age pensioners, and mothers who have to push perambulators. I do not think that is the right approach. The time has arrived when the Post Office should consider the problem as it affects the areas which I have mentioned.
I am glad to have had the opportunity of speaking in this debate. I hope that next year we shall have a similar debate, but that it will take place earlier in the evening.

10.26 p.m.

Mrs. Joyce Butler: I want to ask three questions which I hope the Assistant Postmaster-General will answer. My first question relates to the problem, which is in the minds of many of us, of moving business offices out of the London area to outlying districts. The Town and Country Planning Association has just published a report resulting from interviews with sixty firms which have moved out of London into an area within a 25-mile radius of central London. The majority of these firms were overwhelmingly satisfied with the move. They have found great advantages but there have been disadvantages, one of which is the high cost of telephones, for obviously businesses incur large telephone bills.
A more serious disadvantage has been the delay in the postal service. When the Assistant Postmaster-General replies on the question of postal services, I should like her to say whether the Department has examined the problems of these firms and the particular difficulties which they experience. Without detracting in any way from the general needs of the ordinary customer, I should like her to say whether the postal services to these firms can be improved, for it is of vital importance in connection with the whole planning policy that telephone and postal services should be adequate if we are to decentralise office and business accommodation from central London.
My second question relates to recruitment. On 28th February I asked the Minister of Labour whether he could state how many men between the ages of 60 and 65 were unemployed, and he said that on 11th December last year there were 34,724 unemployed men in that age group. A number of men in that age group become redundant and have to take lighter work. In view of the difficulty which the Post Office experiences in recruitment, I wonder whether it is possible to do something for this group of men. I refer particularly to the Post Office advertisements inviting recruits from men between the ages of 18 and 59. I know that there are difficulties connected with the employment of older men, from the

point of view of pensions and the type of work that they are able to do, but I wonder whether something can be done to bring some of these men into employment and to raise the age limit above 59.
My third point, which has already been referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Openshaw (Mr. W. R. Williams), relates to the problem of elderly people and the telephone service. The hon. Lady knows that if elderly people, particularly those living alone, can have the telephone, they are enabled to be self-supporting and self-sufficient for a very much longer time than they would be if they had not that means of keeping in touch with their friends and calling someone in to help in an emergency.
After Questions in the House on this subject, the Postmaster-General was good enough to write to me on 8th February explaining some of the difficulties in helping elderly people with their telephone charges. In the last paragraph of his letter, he said that he was setting in hand a further examination of the whole problem. How is that examination proceeding? Can the hon. Lady give us a report about it tonight or say when we may expect to have one? It is a matter of great concern to elderly people, as she knows.

10.30 p.m.

Mr. Edwin Wainwright: I associate myself with what has been said by my hon. Friend the Member for Wood Green (Mrs. Butler) about the provision of telephones for elderly people, and I support what was said on the matter by the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Costain). Old people living on their own are often very lonesome and a telephone in the home gives a good deal of comfort, especially during the winter when it is difficult for them to get about.
I want the Postmaster-General to consider this matter seriously and sympathetically. I suggest that he should have discussions with those local authorities which operate call systems which old people can use in the event of illness or trouble. If he cannot make concessions to old people so that they may have the telephone in the home, he should arrange for some kind of call


system, perhaps operated through a central exchange, which old people can use to ask for help if need be.
I am sorry that the right hon. Gentleman is not present. His absence puts me in a rather invidious position because I wish to comment on something he said in his opening speech. He seemed rather hurt when he was talking about the wage pause and its effect on Post Office workers. If there should ever be such a thing as a wage pause again—I sincerely hope that there will not—he should, instead of basing his comparisons on what is happening in this country, make his comparisons with wages paid to telephone operators and post office workers in other countries. If he had done that in this case, he would have seen that the criticisms levelled against him by the Post Office unions were necessary and well founded criticisms.
Wage increases on the Continent averaged between 11 per cent. and 12 per cent. whereas in this country the rise was only 3·4 per cent. Post Office workers had good reason to feel strongly in the matter. I hope that future relations between the right hon. Gentleman and his Department and the unions will be better than they have been in 1961 and 1962.
I felt that the Postmaster-General took a rather easy view of Post Office activities today. The number of people on the waiting list for telephones has increased during the past three months or so. Over the years, the number had been coming down, but the move is now upwards again. Is this the sort of standard which the Post Office is to give in the future?
It is not always the right course for hon. Members to make comparisons between certain years. I hate to hark back to 1951 or the years between 1945 and 1951 because so often we hear hon. Members being scornful or gloating over what happened during that period. I wish that they would sometimes consider the standards that existed in the years up to 1939. Rather than make those sort of comparisons, hon. Members should compare our communications system with that of other countries. I was interested to find that, compared with countries with similar standards of living, we are ninth on the list regard-

ing the number of telephones per 100 of the population. Is the Postmaster-General pleased about that? Is he satisfied that, in this so-called affluent society, we should be ninth on the list?
It is worth remembering that many of the countries on the list have fewer people to the square mile and, therefore, the capital investment required for each telephone is higher. The Post Office unions are constantly trying to make the right hon. Gentleman realise that more telephones must be provided, specially since so much of the profit of the Post Office is derived from that source.
Satellite communications is an important aspect for the future. In so many things the Government allow private enterprise to step in after public money has been spent on the necessary research. Just as the Channel bridge or tunnel requires a lot of work before it can be constructed, so the Government need to spend a great deal of money if they are to develop a proper satellite communications system. I hope that they will not delay in the development of this means of communications and allow private enterprise to step in—the Government having paved the way and done all the ground work.
The right hon. Gentleman spoke of co-operation among Commonwealth countries. I hope that will happen, but that request for co-operation should not be restricted to the Commonwealth. Any country willing to co-operate should be welcomed so that we can give a lead to the world in satellite communications. In this connection, I hope that the Postmaster-General will oppose the cold, clammy hand of the Chancellor of the Exchequer and will demand that more money is spent on research into the development of this communications system. The money must be found. It cannot be got from the income of the Post Office and I hope that the Chancellor's cold hand will not prevent this development taking place.
We on this side of the House will give every support to both Ministers and their Departments and all employees in the Post Office unions to ensure that the Post Office organisation improves in efficiency and in working relations and continues to be an example to the rest of the world of what a nationalised


industry can do in the service of the nation.

10.40 p.m.

Mr. Roy Mason: The debate may have been short, because it has come at a late hour; nevertheless it has been worth while. This vast department of State is debated all too rarely in the House. Other than on the harm he has done to staff relations over the past year, the Postmaster-General is to be congratulated upon a measure of success in such matters as the introduction of subscriber trunk dialling, his interest in satellite communications, and the start made on modernising the Post Office. Unfortunately, few people know about Post Office achievements. Two or three hon. Members have mentioned this, in particular my hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead, West (Mr. Randall) and the hon. Member for Acton (Mr. Holland).
Generally speaking, the Postmaster-General is an uncommunicative character. This is reflected in the two White Papers of the past two years. They are not helpful. They are short and scanty in content. They could have been expanded, to the benefit of the public and of the Post Office. No doubt the right hon. Gentleman has taken note that two of my hon. Friends have pointed this out to him. I know that it is difficult for him to follow his "gimmicky" predecessor. I should not like him to go to extremes and copy his predecessor's methods, but the public are entitled to know more about the Post Office and its services. If they did, the Post Office itself would benefit financially from greater use of those services.
I had hoped that the right hon. Gentleman would have gone into more detail about the progress being made in the mechanisation of the Post Office. I have already suggested that he should consider showing on film or television the working of the electronic random number indicator "Ernie" so that the public may see that it is a fair system. What progress is being made with the electronic sorting machine, "Elsie"? This appears to be the first stage of mechanisation of letter sorting. Hot on its heels we are having automatic sorting by machine which reads phosphorescent guide dots on envelopes. Are

both experiments proving a tremendous success? If so, what thought is being given to the introduction of uniformity of envelopes. We have an automatic letter-facing machine, "Alf", which would benefit in operation if there were such uniformity. Mention of these machines makes me look forward to the day when we might have machines called "Reggie" and "Mervyn".
My hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead, West mentioned sorting offices and my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Openshaw (Mr. W. R. Williams) spoke of the progress he had seen made in some of them. I should like to refer to what I have witnessed in a London sorting office. No doubt this happens in many large city offices. As the five-day week is introduced generally and hours are staggered for the benefit of workers, letters are posted later in the city and reach the sorting offices later in the day. Trains still leave almost at the same time, with the result that feverish activity is concentrated into a short period to get the mails off on time. Business people in the City still expect the same service and efficiency, but they should be told that this is proving difficult because of the short space of time and that it is essential to post earlier. This applies also to business people in other cities.
Mention has been made of the all-purpose counters. What progress is being made with these? Much still remains to be done. I have visited some, particularly in my constituency. Post offices in small towns are usually overcrowded. The counters are short and some of them are shared by various services. One gets criss-cross queues with feverish activity at one counter while others, which still have to be manned, are little used. This results in public inconvenience and some bad service.
I know that the Post Office is doing something about this problem, particularly in the large towns. But, with the post offices busier than ever, the right hon. Gentleman should be thinking about some of the smaller post offices, particularly in the North, and trying to get a more rapid service in them.
A matter which has often been raised in this House is that of pictorial stamps. I know the arguments against—that this


country's position is unique and that we can only continue leaving our name off stamps while the monarch's head appears on them. Nevertheless, pressure is mounting on this issue. Philatelists particularly want more pictorials, and there is an increasing demand for them both at home and abroad. It would be a splendid opportunity to display our history and our culture, and the right hon. Gentleman should certainly consider broadening the experiment.
A short while ago, we had a pictorial stamp showing our castles. This was a high-priced stamp. On it, we retained the monarch's head in a prominent place alongside attractive pictures of castles, and we did not include the name of the country. The right hon. Gentleman should consider issuing stamps of this nature in the lower denominations, thus being able to satisfy the desire of the philatelists and to increase demand. The Post Office would benefit financially.
We have often criticised the Postmaster-General for uncommunicativeness, for not telling the people about the services, and for doing little about advertising. There is no mention of advertising in the 1961 Report, nor in the two White Papers. He is aware of the importance of advertising and of the urgent need for it in the Post Office. My hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead, West quoted what the right hon. Gentleman said during the Second Reading of the Post Office Act, 1961, and I will do so again. The right hon. Gentleman said:
It is, I think, a fact that, at present, the public is curiously ill-informed about many of our facilities and services.…
We need much more publicity and much better public information."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 25th January, 1961; Vol. 633, c. 181–2.]
What is the right hon. Gentleman doing about it? I admired his stand when he was questioned about advertising on the front covers of telephone directories; he took them away from commercial companies and is now using them for Post Office advertising. He lost about £20,000 in doing so, but, no doubt, because people are becoming more informed about Post Office services, he will get that money back. The sales staff are partly responsible for promoting sales and informing people of the services. They have gone through

a very long and tedious period of explaining, first, why people cannot have a telephone, and now that, as the right hon. Gentleman says, the waiting list is being reduced it has coincided with the introduction of subscriber trunk dialling—S.T.D.
Here, the Postmaster-General is subject to some criticism. S.T.D. was introduced with little preparation. The public were not fully informed. The right hon. Gentleman has had shoals of complaints, there has been correspondence in the national Press, and he has been questioned time and again in the House. The Post Office is now having to counteract all that by using Press advertising to defend S.T.D. The right hon. Gentleman's comments tonight emphasised that point. My hon. Friend pointed out that after a time, when people have become accustomed to using S.T.D. they have found it beneficial, but they should have been more fully informed before hand. They would not then have adopted the Luddite approach of which the Postmaster-General spoke, and would not have been afraid of the change.
The trouble is that the public are not informed at all. Indeed, even those who have the telephone are not fully taught how to use it to the best advantage. The telephone is not just a social instrument for the use of the "toffs" of society, and an emergency line for the poor. It is a household thing, and is just as useful as any other piece of household equipment such as the washing machine or the refrigerator.
More should be done by the Post Office to advertise the telephone's usefulness, and then we might creep up in the league of telephone users. Among the twelve countries that are most advanced in the use of the telephone, we are ninth. In Canada, the average number of calls made per person per year is 538; United States, 520; Sweden, 348; Denmark, 302, and Switzerland, 230. Because our people are not being properly educated in its use, our average is 90.
It is time that the Post Office spent a little more on advertising that side. How many people are aware of all the services that are offered? I wonder how many hon. Members would know what


number to ring for the weather forecast, or to find out what is on in London, or for an alarm call in the morning? Few of them would know one of those numbers, and I doubt whether any would know all three. We are supposed to be informed people, yet I doubt whether the public are fully informed of all the services which the Post Office provides. We have a telephone weather forecast service in twelve centres, but few people know that those centres exist. In conjunction with the Automobile Association, we have a road weather service at nine centres, operating throughout the winter, but I doubt whether any hon. Member could tell me of a centre with that service.
I therefore do not think that the Post Office is tackling the problem with the necessary enthusiasm. The Postmaster-General has often said in the past that he cannot get over to people that there are coloured telephones, a wide range of stamp books, high-value postal orders, and the like. In 1961, British Railways spent twice as much on Press advertising as the Post Office, and even the National Savings Movement spent more than did this vast public service in letting people know precisely what was offered. I am surprised that the right hon. Gentleman, the responsible authority for the B.B.C. and I.T.A., does not use those media to the full to get the information over—

Mr. Bevins: If the hon. Gentleman will allow me to say so, the distinction is that the Post Office spends less than do British Railways on advertising but, perhaps, spends it more wisely—and succeeds in making a profit.

Mr. Mason: I do not see how the Postmaster-General can say so emphatically that the money is spent more wisely, when hon. Members cannot tell from the Reports how it was spent. We should like to see a boost in the use of the services as a result of Press advertisements. I cannot see that the right hon. Gentleman can maintain that standpoint when we are not as informed as we should be.
I wonder if the Postmaster-General has interested himself in an experiment which has taken place in Germany during the past five years—comfort and guidance by telephone. I think that this is a matter worthy of consideration by

the Post Office. It would, no doubt, necessitate a pilot scheme. I know that something is already being done along these lines on a small scale and which is called the "Good Samaritan Service". It caters for an unfortunate category of people suffering from mental depression, loneliness and distress, particularly old folk. Two hon. Members have already mentioned a service for the old people.
I should have thought that we could now give some consideration to introducing a national telephone number which could be regarded as a signal for bringing comfort to lonely people. Even a conversation with the telephone operator might help initially, but in the large cities I have no doubt that a number of clergymen, psychiatrists and social workers would be willing to form a committee which, on receiving a call via the exchange, might be able to help and comfort the lonely. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will look at this suggestion sympathetically and see if he can help. It might be an extension of the Good Samaritan Service.
I now turn to the problems of cables versus satellites. I believe that at this stage we ought to query to what extent we are going to be interested in satellite communications. There is bound to be an argument concerning the extent to which this form of communication will outdate the cables system, whether the satellites will be supplementary to the cables or whether we can draw in our horns on cable expenditure. The conference at present taking place in London of Commonwealth representatives interested in Commonwealth satellite communications will no doubt be studying this question in great detail in the next few weeks.
As far as I can gather, our commitments so far on cable laying represent, first of all, a recently concluded agreement to lay another transatlantic cable between the United States and this country at a cost of £18 million. This cable, I understand, is to be laid next year. Secondly, there is the long leg of the Commonwealth cable between New Zealand and Canada via Fiji and Hawaii which is to be laid in 1964 at a cost of £26 million. The New Zealand-Australian link is being laid this year. This will mean that half of the "round the world cable" will have been laid.
Can the Postmaster-General say whether thought has been given to halting there and hoping that by 1965 global communications, including the Commonwealth countries, might then develop? I know that progress is proving to be rapid in this field, and on behalf of my hon. Friend the Member for Openshaw and myself I applaud the endeavours of the Post Office in this matter. The Postmaster-General said recently that it is not his desire to be a "space titchie". We should be obliged if the right hon. Gentleman would take the matter a bit further and say positively what we are going to do. We cannot allow ourselves to trail behind in these developments.
The Post Office, alongside the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the French Centre for Telecommunications Studies, is cooperating in an ambitious and hopeful project, a project to demonstrate the feasibility of Atlantic communications via space satellites. Our contribution to date is the building of the Goonhilly transmission and reception ground station at a cost of £600,000. This may be all very well for experimenting initially to see how good the system might be of transmitting to the satellite over the Atlantic and to America.
We should like to know to what extent we are going to be fastened on this. Does it mean that if the experimenting which the Post Office is now carrying out with the United States proves successful shall we rent communications from the Americans? Shall we be able to look forward to achieving what I understand are the Post Office's targets of a 24-hour telephone service with 1,000 telephone channels and with one or two television links as well? To What extent are we going to have our own satellite system? If it is to be used with America, it looks as though we will have to rent it, and this might prove too costly.
We should like to see the Post Office and the Ministry of Aviation going ahead with attempts, either with Europe, or with the Commonwealth countries, to launch our own satellite. The Blue Streak missile which has failed militarily could be used as the first launching vehicle for satellite purposes. We know

that if we go into the space communications race it will prove costly initially, but we think that eventually it will prove worth while. We hope that the Government, and particularly the Post Office, will do all that they can to speed up this development.
I understand that the British Space Development Company presented a plan to the Government five months ago, outlining how we could set up a global system of telecommunications. So far the Government have given no indication of their reaction to this plan. The Commonwealth is interested. Europe is interested. We are technically advanced in this sphere. Our research scientists and some Post Office engineers have done research into space satellites. We have the initial launcher vehicle. We should be giving some indication to our scientists, engineers, and space rocketry people that we are going to do something about this, and that we intend to develop space communications.
I turn finally to the question of bulk supply agreements. This is the system whereby the Post Office, in purchasing telephones, cables, exchange equipment, and so on, has been dealing for many years with a ring of firms. A reservation clause has been introduced in the last few years, and this has meant a slight relaxation of the grip that the ring has had on the Post Office.
Throughout this period the system of purchasing Post Office equipment has been open to criticism, and indeed has been subjected to many probes by the Public Accounts Committee and by the Select Committee on Estimates. It was questioned in 1947 and 1954 by the Public Accounts Committee, and again by the Select Committee on Estimates in 1950. The Monopolies Commission examined the cable industry in 1952, and as a result the reservation clause was adopted. This asked the Post Office to place a percentage of its orders with firms outside the ring. It was very small. It was approximately 10 per cent. and at this stage we are nowhere near that.
I want the House to note that there have been two important recent developments. First, there was the Pye take-over of a number of the ring firms. Secondly, there was the Third Report from the Public Accounts Committee.
Let us deal with the first. Prior to the Pye take-over, Mr. C. O. Stanley, a spokesman of the company, made a few statements. He told the President of the Board of Trade that in the interests of the export trade, and in the interests of telecommunication and telephone equipment the ring should be destroyed, first, because it was wrong anyway, and, secondly, because it was proving disastrous to our export effort, pointing out that exports from the ring had stagnated over the past three years while world telephone business had more than doubled in the past five years. Thirdly, he demanded that the dosed shop conditions in telephone manufacture and design should be ended.
He was then on the outside looking in. Now he is inside and is a party to the bulk supply agreement. Would not it be right to ask the Postmaster-General whether Mr. Stanley has made representations to him reasserting his previous demands? May we also be told the extent to which our exports of telephone equipment are either stagnating or flourishing?
The reason why we want to know more about the activities of the ring and its effect on exports is that a merger has taken place within the ring. In August of last year an announcement appeared in the Financial Times stating that a £55 million merger in the communications industry involving the Plessey Company, the Automatic Telephone and Electric Company and Ericsson Telephones was now in being. This means that about 40 per cent. of the telephone work done for the Post Office in this country will be in the hands of the new group. It is in a very strong monopoly position, and if it was not a question of Crown privilege on agreements, this would be worthy of examination by the Monopolies Commission. We must remember that this group is a party to the two main agreements with the Post Office in connection with exchange equipment for telephone purposes.
The merger happened in August of last year almost, it appeared, in defiance of what had happened a month before, when the Third Report from the Committee of Public Accounts appeared. It is interesting to read what the Committee states about this system of bulk

purchasing, when the position was not quite as bad as this new merger has made it. Paragraph 58, on page 21 of the Report, states:
Orders placed in 1959–60 amounted to £28·5 million.
That is quite a sizeable figure. In paragraph 59 there is another sentence stating:
… the rates of profit actually earned by the manufacturers are not known to the Post Office.
That is strange.
Paragraph 61 states:
Your Committee note … that a comparatively small number of manufacturers have enjoyed a virtual monopoly in the supply of an important and substantial part of Post Office requirements for over thirty years, and they are concerned that the normal system of competitive tender should, with the acquiescence of the Post Office, have been set aside for so long. It appears to them that in the absence of competition there can be no assurance that these supplies are being obtained by the most economical methods. The introduction of the reservation clauses into the current agreements for telephone apparatus and exchange equipment is a welcome, though belated, appreciation of the merits of competition. Your Committee accordingly recommend that the Post Office should invite tenders from firms outside the agreements up to the full limit permitted by the agreements, and thus give evidence of a determination to widen the field of supply, and foster competition. If, as your Committee hope, there is an adequate response from the industry, they trust that the Post Office will consider the possibility of terminating the present system.
This is Civil Service phraseology, and not a politician stating forcibly and emphatically what he thinks about this matter. The Committee is not satisfied. It does not think that the Post Office is getting value for money in this operation and it would like to see the ring broken. The Report continues:
It is, however, most unsatisfactory that, for example, the cable agreement, covering the period of four years from September, 1957, should not have been signed until three of the four years for which it was to run had elapsed.
It had been operating for three of the four years and no signatures had been appended to the agreements. In other words, there was a measure of inefficiency and complacency and a could-not-care-less attitude on the part of the Post Office to this problem. What an indictment of the Post Office. First of all, the ring is assisted to the tune of £28½ million. Secondly, there is no


knowledge on the part of the Post Office of the profits which the firms are making. Thirdly, there is the could-not-care-less attitude about the signing of the agreements. Work had been done and money paid out for three years without any signatures being appended to the agreements until last year. Fourthly, in defiance of the Report from the Public Accounts Committee, which expresses the hope that more firms should tender and that there will be a termination of the ring, we see a tightening of the monopoly position where one group now does 40 per cent. of the telephone work for the Post Office.
It may be that Crown privilege operates and protects the Postmaster-General from appearing before the Monopolies Commission. If that is so, and nothing more positive is done to stop these malpractices, we on this side of the House must ask for this privilege to be waived in the public interest. I note that the Postmaster-General gave an intimation that he was widening the tenders and inviting more firms outside the ring to tender for exchange equipment. We think that this is a favourable trend and we intend to watch it closely to see how it develops. Even though the right hon. Gentleman takes it farther than hitherto, it would appear that he has a long way to go before breaking down the monopoly position of this ring system.
Finally, there is still much to be done to improve the Post Office and the vast public service which it offers to us. A measure of progress has been made, which we all applaud, but we only hope that the phrase "public service" is never forgotten, especially during this year of commercial thinking. We welcome this change in Post Office procedure, whereby more opportunities are being provided for debate. We hope that this will continue. Then if the Postmaster-General cannot advertise his successes, hon. Members who take pride in the Post Office will be able periodically to do so.

11.10 p.m.

The Assistant Postmaster-General (Miss Mervyn Pike): We have had an interesting debate and at this late hour it is very tempting to answer in detail

all the questions which have been raised. I will try to emulate previous speakers, however, and be as brief as possible and cut out as many frills as I can.
In trying to draw together all the threads of the debate and all the threads and ramifications of our Post Office activities, I wish that I could have here the working model which is now at the Ideal Home Exhibition and which has been designed by Mr. Emett. It shows in detail, and very often in fantastic but vivid detail, all the many activities of the Post Office. That would possibly give a more comprehensive, and certainly a more amusing, vital and vivid, picture than I can possibly put over tonight.
My right hon. Friend said that I would go in greater detail into the workings of the postal side of Post Office administration. Several hon. Members have mentioned certain aspects of our postal services. I am glad that people have praised the all-purpose working which we have introduced this year. We believe that it is one of the most important things which we have done on the postal side. It has certainly pleased the customer. It has speeded up our Posit Office working and I think that it has improved customer relations, which is a very good and a very important thing.
I hope that hon. Members have noticed that not only have we got the all-purpose working in this context, but we have got rid of the grille between the counter clerk and the customer and we are putting up glass screens, which not only add to the comfort of the customer but make the place look brighter and remove some of the barriers which seemed to exist before.
We recognise the difficulties in Acton. My hon. Friend the Member for Acton (Mr. Holland) certainly keeps them before us the whole time. We promise him that we will not drag our feet in trying to give him the improvements which he wants.
We are bringing more self-service machines into our post offices. These are helping to cut down queues and add to the convenience of the customers. We should all like change machines and stationery dispensers, but these things cost money and take time. However, we are pushing ahead with them as fast as we can.
We are not only improving our service in this way. We are at the same time doing what we can to improve and brighten Post Office buildings. Capital expenditure on the postal services next year is expected to amount to about £10 million. Much of this will go on buildings. The White Paper mentions the building programme for 1962–63 and provides for a start to be made on about 65 new post offices and 50 sorting offices and delivery offices.
The hon. Member for Gateshead, West (Mr. Randall) said that many retail shops are improving their appearance and brightening up their premises. I remind him that a retail shop has a very different problem and challenge. The turnover of a retail shop can be increased if the building is made more attractive. Our problem is that we have all the time to balance the cost of our overheads with our turnover. We do not "dish out" more children's allowances or old-age pensions, or even sell more stamps, because we have the best, brightest and most up-to-date post office in a town. But we do recognise the importance of a good post office building, and we are stepping up our building programme on the telephone and the postal side.
On the postal side, we have to provide for the replacement of a large number of head post offices and of sorting offices, particularly in London where there are old buildings which have long been inadequate for the traffic which has grown, and also for the introduction of the up-to-date mechanisation which the hon. Member for Manchester, Openshaw (Mr. W. R. Williams) mentioned. We want to go ahead with as much mechanisation as possible.
It is difficult to adapt some of the old sorting offices to new methods of mechanisation, but we are pressing on with this and we have scheduled more than 900 offices all over the country for modernisation. Work has already started on about 80 of them and many more are being planned. As many hon. Members know, our aim is to modernise between 100 and 150 offices a year. The average cost is expected to be between £2,000 and £3,000 for each office and we are allocating £300,000 a year for this work.
As the hon. Member for Gateshead, West mentioned, in all our building programmes we have tremendous scope for saving in the planning of our buildings. It was, I think, the hon. Member who referred to the progress which has been made with schools from this point of view. We believe that we can teach other people how to save money. We have set up, with the Ministry of Works, a research team which is looking into the possibilities of saving money in the efficient planning of our offices.
There are two buildings which show particularly clearly the possibilities of introducing new ideas and new techniques into post office buildings. These are the telephone exchange at Altrincham, which should be open this autumn, and the head post office at Hitchin, which was opened in February of this year. Both of these buildings include features which, I hope, will enable us to provide better services for customers, which is one of the most important considerations. Yet by taking careful thought it has proved possible to build them much more cheaply than comparable buildings in the past.
The cost of the telephone exchange was cut from an original estimate of £60,000 to £25,000. Hon. Members will recognise that that is an extraordinarily dramatic saving particularly in present circumstances. The cost of the post office at Hitchin was cut from an original estimate of £100,000 to £60,000. Both buildings were, of course, designed by the special research team which I have mentioned, a joint enterprise between the Post Office and the Ministry of Works. This shows how particularly fruitful this sort of co-operation can be.
A basic feature in each design has been the planning of a building for the short term but one which is capable of easy extension. As has been said, we are sometimes inclined to build for ever. Here we have built so that we can adapt our buildings in the long-term in the light of needs. This, of course, has called for great ingenuity on the part of the design team.
There is a third building to the designs of this group, an engineering centre at Plymouth, which is due to start in May of this year. This group not only designs specific buildings, but has also been researching into better methods of


building generally. The results of these researches are used to reduce the cost of all our post office buildings, and, indeed, of the adaptation of so many our post offices.
The hon. Member for Openshaw mentioned the handling of mails between post offices, and he praised the recent report on the handling of mails. We have made a start with the implementation of the recommendations of the study group which reported last year. As the hon. Gentleman said, the members of that group were people with tremendous "know-how" in the handling of mails and in industry generally. We feel that we shall make considerable progress if we can go ahead with implementing their report.
Our constant aim is to improve services wherever we can and, at the same time, to hold down the cost of our operations. To improve our service, we introduced on 1st November last an airmail service between London and Glasgow and Edinburgh and Belfast. The service is run in conjunction with British European Airways, and it is now carrying about 10 tons of mail nightly. About 52 million letters a year are being delivered earlier than before.
Letters for the first delivery on the following weekday morning in many parts of Scotland can now be posted in London about two hours later than before, and for Northern Ireland as much as four hours later. There is much correspondence for the Home Counties posted in Scotland and Northern Ireland which is being delivered a day earlier. I am sure that these improvements in speeding up the service are not only in the interest of the general public, but, more particularly, in the interest of businesses in those parts of the country.
The important impact of the study group's recommendations is most likely to be on the parcel post, where we have the greatest scope for improvement. To assess the possibility of improving this service and, at the same time, reduce our costs, we are planning to start this year a large-scale experiment covering the whole of East Anglia. This will involve the concentration of parcel mails on suitable centres and despatching them in bulk between those centres, making greater use of road transport for their conveyance, especially over shorter distances.
When the hon. Member for Openshaw mentioned the East Anglia experiment, he spoke as if it was just to cover a rural district. I assure him that East Anglia was chosen because we feel that it is a very suitable place in which to conduct this type of experiment. We have other experiments going in other parts of the country. There is one in Yorkshire, about which the hon. Member for Barnsley (Mr. Mason) has probably heard, which is proving quite successful. The information which we have collected so far suggests that, with the co-operation of the railways, we shall be able to make some fairly substantial improvements in the parcel post service.
We recognise, of course, that there is the probability of great changes in the railway services. For some time, we have realised that there would be a changing pattern of rail services in this country, and five years ago the British Transport Commission readily agreed to our proposal for a high-level joint Post Office and Transport Commission committee to be set up with the task of making sure that the arrangements for mails on the railways were modified in ways best suited to meeting Post Office and railway needs as modernisation developed.
These activities have included a review of the methods of loading and unloading mail carried on trains, a matter raised in the House only yesterday. The activities of this committee are supplemented by continuing contacts and consultations at all levels right through the Post Office hierarchy. I assure the House that we recognise the need for constant consultation so that both we and British Railways are well aware of each other's plans for the future. Just as British Railways have far-reaching plans for the future, we, too, want to keep abreast of all modern developments and methods.
The hon. Member for Gateshead spoke about the siting of sub-post offices. I agree that it is a good thing to review, especially in urban areas, the need for sub-post offices. None of us is ever satisfied that we have our sub-post offices in the right place. It would be wonderful to be Assistant Postmaster-General at a time when one could wipe the slate clean and start all over again, siting them just where they should be


to accord with modern needs. Of course, in an organisation such as the Post Office, which has been going for about 300 years, conditions and requirements change.
We have done a lot in new housing estates and where there has been considerable new building to ensure that we work very closely with the local authorities to see that we get our new post offices and sub-offices in the right places. However, we are looking at the needs of the urban areas all the time. Hon. Members are aware of our difficulties. We cannot uproot someone who has been serving us well for many years. We cannot, if we are to be good employers, suddenly terminate someone's employment just because the needs of the district, the focus of the area, has changed.
Possibly the remarks of the hon. Member for Acton about the growth of his constituency and the fact that the facilities there were too cramped, to a great extent highlights what the hon. Lady the Member for Wood Green (Mrs. Butler) said about the need to ensure that our services match the requirements when new building takes place in the country. I can assure the hon. Lady that we look at this matter carefully. It is not always easy to get our services as quick or efficient in these outlying places as it is in London, but we are alive to the need to match efficient postal services in these areas and I can assure her that we have this matter constantly in mind.

Mr. Randall: Can the hon. Lady give an assurance that there will be a study made into the siting of sub-offices in the urban areas?

Miss Pike: I am glad to give the hon. Gentleman that assurance, but this would be a matter for regions as a whole. This study is going on the whole time and it will be speeded up to make certain that we do all we can to meet the requirements of these places. I cannot promise that every hon. Member who asks for a sub-office will be given one immediately, but we will certainly do our best.
We believe that we have an extraordinarily good record in the progress of mechanisation. The experiments at

Luton and Norwich are going forward well and we are in consultation with the envelope manufacturers about the need for standardisation of envelopes. I think that we can claim that our experiments are foremost in this field in the world. We hope that we shall be able to keep that lead.
We are not only experimenting with the sorting and segregation of mail, but with the sorting of parcels. The pushbutton machine at Leeds sorts 10,000 parcels an hour. When I mention this at public meetings I am inclined to say "10,000 parcels a minute," with the resultant looks of consternation from the audience. Other forms of mechanisation are in progress and I hope that I have covered most of the questions that were put by hon. Members on the actual postal services.
We have an extraordinarily good tale to tell about telecommunications, but my right hon. Friend has already told most of it. There is, in addition to the development in the telephone service, an interesting and important advance in our Telex service which is making extremely good progress. Telex offers many advantages to industry and commerce and has been even more popular since it became fully automatic in 1960. Demand has doubled in the past four years and more than 1,600 new lines will be added in 1962–63, bringing the total to over 10,000 lines. About 20,000 subscribers are expected by 1970 and to cope with this growth 21 new Telex exchanges will be required and work will be started on six of these in 1962–63.
A second and most important development concerns data transmission. The Post Office is becoming increasingly involved in this new form of communication. Expensive computers have to be used fully if they are to be economic, and already some large industrial and commercial groups are sending data into computers from widely dispersed branches and subsidiaries. Smaller organisations which cannot justify computers of their own will want to hire time on other people's machines. This too, will call for the transmission of data to and from computer centres. These trends will lead to a rapidly increasing use of telecommunications networks for data transmission, and within the next decade there will be a large


number of data calls passing over the telephone and Telex networks in this country. Some facilities for this traffic are already available and others are being developed so that the Post Office may be ready to meet the needs of industry in good time.
The necessity to push on with our expansion of telecommunications highlights to some extent the need for satellite communications which has been mentioned in the debate. My right hon. Friend opened the Commonwealth Satellite Conference which started in this country today and I think that the very fact that we are having the conference at this time answers the questions which many hon. Members have raised as to whether we are keeping abreast and whether we shall be first or at least well up in the field in this important means of communication.
I do not think that the House would wish me to weary right hon. and hon. Members, longer with what we are hoping we can do in this respect. We have hopes and expectations of what can be done with satellite communications, but, at the same time, we have to ensure that we also have the basic submarine cable communications. I quite appreciate the point made that we do not want massive investment in communications which might be useless in years to come, but this is a field in which one person's guess is almost as good as anybody else's. We want to be absolutely certain that we have a backbone of communications systems throughout the Commonwealth. In this respect, it is interesting to note that the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, despite a huge effort on the development of satellite communications, has decided not to change its plans for a very large investment in submarine cables between now and 1965–66. We, too, would be foolish if we stopped any effort that we are putting into these cables at present, but all the time we must look to what is happening in this field.
The growth of telephone traffic also calls for a strengthening of the overseas cables system. Last year, representatives of seven Western European countries met in London and provisionally agreed to a programme involving the provision of six additional cables between Britain and the Continent by 1967. Recently contracts have been placed for the

manufacture in this country of the first three of these—two to Germany and one to Denmark, giving a total of about 350 more telephone lines to Western Europe. We also have more telephone lines to Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand. AH in all, we are catering for growth in our overseas services at the same time that we are stepping up the growth of the telephone traffic in this country.
Several hon. Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Costain) and the hon. Members for Openshaw and Wood Green, spoke of the need of the housebound and elderly to have telephone communication with the outside world. My right hon. Friend has stated that we are considering this matter. I can assure hon. Members that we are giving very urgent and deep thought to it, but they will recognise that it is a highly complicated problem. There are many difficulties—for instance, what should be the categories, and how should it be dome? But we are sympathetic to the needs of old people. As soon as he has anything to report, my right hon. Friend will come to the House with it, but I cannot promise that that will be very soon, because, as I know from my own experience, a lot of thinking has to be done about it.
The hon. Member for Openshaw asked about the telephone waiting list—specifically, whether it was now under 50,000. I am sorry to have to tell him that it stands at 53,000. He asked how many would-be subscribers would have to wait for twelve months, and the answer is one-tenth of the list. As my right hon. Friend said, we are laying a very large number of additional cables. We are laying 300,000 more lines at present in underground cables to try to build up plant and equipment which will enable us to give service more quickly. Each day, 12,000 new telephones are being connected. That is a remarkable increase.
Subscriber trunk dialling was also mentioned. When people get it, they like it. The hon. Member for Barnsley asked why we did not make them like it before they got it by describing the joys that they would experience. But to convince a man against his will is to leave him of the same opinion still.
This system is in my constituency, and I have not yet had any complaints about it. I am sure that my constituents would soon complain if they did not like it.
Another important matter which has been raised is that of recruiting and wages of our postmen. The hon. Member for Wood Green asked specifically about the 60–65 age group. We will see what we can do, but the job of a postman is arduous and the hours are not easy. It means getting up early and being out in all weathers. These factors, as well as pensions, must be considered. Having said that, I should add that we must recognise we are an ageing but healthier population. We will always keep in mind the need for finding employment wherever possible for this very important age-group that the hon. Lady mentioned.
Our story of recruitment is not as bad as hon. Members like to make it. In London, the vacancies in November, 1961, were 1,300. Now, they are 650. In the telephone service, there are 5,000 more in post now than a year ago. We can claim that we are not falling back in recruitment, but we must recognise that, in common with most other industries and large concerns, we have a tremendous problem in recruiting and keeping labour.
Hon. Members spoke about the turnover in our young people. We would like to think that those joining us stay for ever, but times have changed and we suffer, in the same was as other industries and large organisations, from a much larger staff turnover than was considered feasible in the past. Security does not mean quite the same thing to young people today, but I think that we can claim that our turnover is not as high as it is in some other organisations.
The reason for that is possibly that we lay tremendous stress on the training of our people. Most Post Office work is highly specialised and is without counterpart in other industries. Most of the staff are recruited with general educational qualifications, and the Post Office accepts full responsibility for teaching them their jobs. We feel that it is right that we should regard expenditure on this training as an investment in human resources, which is of equal importance to any investment on capital equipment.
The Post Office spends about £10 million a year on training.
We have developed an extensive system of internal training; there are 78 training centres covering all sides of staff training. We have our own training centres for instructors, all of whom are drawn from our own staff, with firsthand experience of the work they have to teach. Training is also given at centres in outside educational institutions. We have, as is well known, a very fine apprenticeship scheme which allows young people to come in with G.C.E., and go on, on the engineering side, to university degree standards.
If there were time, I would very much like to deal with the different ramifications of our training. I think that we can claim to enable our people to progress through the various grades. In fact, the records of many of our people in top management proves the tremendous scope there is in the Post Office for people to make a real contribution to the organisation while, at the same time, bettering their own chances in life.
The hon. and learned Member for Stoke Newington and Hackney, North (Mr. Weitzman) referred to Premium Bonds. The responsibility for that side is not vested in the Post Office; we are only concerned as a manager. The terms of issue of the bonds lie with the Treasury, so that it is for Treasury Ministers to reply on the actual terms on which the bonds are issued. The hon. and learned Gentleman asked me for the authority; the Premium Bond authority is the prospectus, which constitutes the contract between the Treasury and every holder, and the Treasury itself is exercising powers of a general character conferred by various Acts, including the National Loans Act, 1939.
Having said that, I must add that I have a tremendous sympathy for the person in the case that the hon. and learned Gentleman has mentioned, and the fact that he has aired it here tonight, and has given some publicity to it may, perhaps, enable us to get across to the general public what the considerations are, and possibly enable hon. Members to have some influence with the Treasury in seeing whether different regulations could be devised. I must say that when I have to sign a letter saying that the deceased person's next-of-kin—it is


usually a widow—cannot benefit from the winning bond, I wish that something could be done. It is a matter for Treasury Ministers.
The only other thing I wish to mention is the point raised by the hon. Member for Barnsley about our advertisements and our public relations. Of course, one could spend a tremendous amount on advertisements and I think that we could possibly spend it to no good purpose in the Post Office. We are trying to make the best possible use of our own media. Hon. Members will have seen the stickers on the postal vans and the posters, particularly the good display of posters which we had in Charing Cross Station last year. We do what we can with our own media and we try by good Press advertisement to bring to the notice of the general public the many services which we have to offer.
We have, of course, a great many services, but people will not look at what they do not want to look at. We advertise them on telephone directories, in the newspapers and in our post offices. I hope that hon. Members themselves will perhaps do something to advertise our services for us. "Ernie" is not very photogenic, and just to make a film of him churning out his numbers would not, we think, serve the purpose. But my right hon. Friend is looking into the possibility of having a film made, with diagrams, which would give people some idea of the sort of thing that we are trying to do.
The hon. Member for Barnsley mentioned two other matters. One was pictorial stamps. I do not propose to go into that matter now, but I would ask the hon. Gentleman to go to the Design Centre, where there is an interesting display of stamps. I can assure the hon. Gentleman that British stamps come out extraordinarily well in that display. If he looks at that display in conjunction with some of the possibly

better thought out features in our stamp design he will, I feel sure, recognise that as far as our stamps and our special issues are concerned we have nothing to be ashamed of in this country.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned bulk supply agreements and all the complications in that field. I am sure that at this hour the hon. Gentleman would not wish me to go into that very complicated argument, but I can assure him that my right hon. Friend has listened with great interest to all he has had to say and that possibly on a future occasion he can return to the battle once again.
I wish to say how grateful we are in the Post Office for the tremendous interest that is shown in our affairs. I hope that I have answered most of the questions which hon. Members have put in the debate. I apologise to the House for speaking at such length, and, in conclusion, I would add my gratitude to the words spoken by my right hon. Friend for all the loyal service that we receive in the Post Office from the postmen on the rounds up to every level in management. Perhaps the fact that we do not talk so much about our good service and our good relations in general is because so many of us take for granted the very willing and efficient service which we receive from the telephone operators in the sub-post offices and from our friends in the Post Office everywhere.
This debate gives us once more a very good opportunity of saying how grateful we are as a nation for the work done, and it is in that spirit that I hope the House will pass this Motion this evening.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,
That the Postmaster General be authorised, as provided for in Section 5 of the Post Office Act, 1961, to make payments out of the Post Office Fund in the financial year ending with the 31st March, 1963.

HOUSING, WOLVERHAMPTON (COUNCILLORS' VOTING RIGHTS)

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Chichester-Clark.]

11.49 p.m.

Mr. John Baird (Wolverhampton, North-East): I wish tonight to raise a matter which looked, at first, as if it were a purely local one, but which might be the thin edge of the wedge as far as all councils with Labour majorities are concerned. It is the refusal of the Minister to grant a dispensation to council house tenants and aldermen in my area of Wolverhampton to vote on a housing question. This has arisen because of a legal decision on a case which arose after the last election when, due to a technicality, the balance of the council was altered and the parties were almost equally represented in the council chamber. Since then, because of the death of one of our most distinguished aldermen, our majority has dwindled and now depends on the mayor's casting vote.
The Minister, though not refusing to grant a dispensation, was very slow in coming to a decision at the time of the most recent housing committee meeting. The result was that Labour councillors who lived in council houses felt that they would be running the risk of being involved in huge legal costs if they voted on this issue. As a result, the Conservative opposition were able to move two motions, one dealing with the sale of council houses, and the other dealing with the issue of differential rents for council houses.
At present, there are 60 members of the council, divided equally between the parties, but the mayor has the casting vote. Of these 60 members, at least 15 live in council houses. This means that a quarter of the members of the council are disfranchised as a result of the Minister's decision. I do not know how one can make democracy work in such a situation.
As I said, because of the death recently of an alderman, the Labour majority depends on the mayor's casting vote, which I have every reason to believe he will cast with the Labour group in control of the council. It is

rather like you, Mr. Speaker. You usually lean towards the Government side, if anything, to see that Government business is carried through. This probably happens with the chairman of any council.
My second point is that in every election so far since the war a dispensation has been granted to councillors living in council houses to vote. Why has not this dispensation been granted now? Furthermore, why has a dispensation been granted to councillors living in council houses to vote on the question of the sale of council houses, but not on the question of differential rents? So far as I know, there is no other council with a Labour majority where this dispensation has not been granted.
The present Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations stated in 1957 that where there was a Labour majority the councillors living in council houses should be granted a dispensation. There are 15 councillors in Wolverhampton living in council houses. After the war we did very well with our council house programme and the figure was among the best in the country. At that time there was, of course, a Labour Government. That is why there are so many councillors living in council houses in Wolverhampton. Yet they are all disfranchised. In one of the wards all the councillors are disfranchised, which means that between 20,000 and 30,000 people have no way of indicating their approval or disapproval over this matter. But they are to be troubled by snoopers, a means test, and all the other things which go with the worst type of differential rent system.
The Minister of Health shares with me the Parliamentary representation of Wolverhampton. The right hon. Gentleman may have put on the pressure. I do not know. But if he thinks that he will strengthen his party by taking this disciplinary action against some of the most decent citizens in the town he will find that he is mistaken, and that this will boomerang back upon him. When an election comes the tenants of the council houses will indicate their resentment of the differential rent scheme and the way in which it has been imposed on them. I am sorry that the Minister of Housing and Local Government is not present, for he is responsible for


this major decision. I do not know whether the Minister has any of his old liberalism left. Perhaps he turned his coat long ago. If his so-called liberalism is more than skin-deep, he should reverse this decision immediately in the name of good democracy.

12 m.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government (Mr. Geoffrey Rippon): I can well understand the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mr. Baird) raising this matter, which is of importance in his constituency. I give him one assurance straight away. My right hon. Friend the Minister of Health had nothing to do with this decision. He was not concerned with it in any way. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will welcome that assurance and that no one in Wolverhampton will be misled into thinking any different.

Mr. Baird: Who, then, sent the letter to the Town Clerk of Wolverhampton refusing the dispensation?

Mr. Rippon: I said my right hon. Friend the Minister of Health had nothing to do with this decision. The letter was sent from the Ministry of behalf of my right hon. Friend the Minister of Housing and Local Government.
I suggest to the hon. Gentleman—I am sure that he will accept this—that it is a basic principle of our local government system that a member of a council should neither speak nor vote when he has a direct or indirect pecuniary interest, unless he has received a specific dispensation enabling him to do so. The interpretation of what is a direct or indirect pecuniary interest within the meaning of Section 76 of the Local Government Act, 1933, has given rise to difficulty from time to time, but there appears to be no room for doubt about the position of councillors who are council house tenants. The courts have held that they have a pecuniary interest in any matter relating to the rents of council houses. It is clearly wrong, as I am sure the House will agree, for anybody to be able to vote in a matter in which he has a pecuniary interest, unless there are exceptional circumstances. Dispensation to speak, on the other hand, is usually

readily forthcoming, as indeed it was in this case.
We are largely bound by Statute in what we do in this matter. Section 76 (8) of the 1933 Act empowers the Minister, or the county council in the case of parish councils, to remove either or both the disability to speak or vote in only two classes of case. He may give his dispensation either where
the number of members of the local authority or the committee so disabled at any one time would be so great a proportion of the whole as to impede the transaction of business; or in any other case in which it appears to him that it is in the interests of the inhabtants of the area that the disability should be removed.
As the hon. Gentleman pointed out, the policy governing the exercise of this statutory power is set out in Circular No. 30/56. This makes it clear that there are only two sets of circumstances in which the Minister will normally give a councillor who is a tenant of a council house dispensation to vote on a matter affecting rent. The circular says, in paragraph 5:
The Minister believes that local authorities generally recognise that, where it can reasonably be avoided, it is undesirable that councillors should vote on a matter in which they have a pecuniary interest.
Paragraph 6 says this:
In cases where this issue does arise, the Minister will continue the existing practice of removing the disability on voting where half, or more than half, the members of a council or a committee would otherwise be disabled.
That does not apply in the case we are considering tonight.
The relevant paragraph is paragraph 7, which reads as follows:
However, circumstances may be such that the inability of even a small proportion of members to vote might possibly lead to the adoption of a policy to which the majority of a council were opposed. Where such a situation is anticipated the Minister would be prepared to give sympathetic consideration to an application for the removal of a disability to vote on issues affecting rent policy, provided that such application is supported by a resolution of the council and accompanied by a note explaining the circumstances.
The underlying reason for the policy set out in this paragraph was explained in the letter which we sent to the Town Clerk of Wolverhampton on 26th February of this year. It is this, that my right hon. Friend feels it necessary for the will of the local electorate to prevail without regard to his own views on any


particular issues at stake. There can be no question of political bias. In the past, when the Labour Party had a clear majority on the council, dispensation has been given to Wolverhampton councillors who are council house tenants in order to maintain that majority. Only recently in the case of Manchester my right hon. Friend gave a dispensation in such circumstances.
But I would say to the hon. Gentleman in all sincerity that quite different considerations arose when, on 15th February, there came this application from Wolverhampton for dispensation to discuss and vote on a proposal to discontinue the rate subsidy to council house rents and to introduce a differential rent scheme.
At that time the composition of the council was, on the Conservative side, 23 councillors and seven aldermen, making the 30 to which the hon. Gentleman referred; on the Labour side 21 councillors, eight aldermen and the mayor who, after the party's attempt to secure the aldermanic seats had been successfully challenged in the High Court, is not a member of the council otherwise than in his capacity as mayor. That makes the Labour Party total of 30. Thus, at the time the two parties were level in total membership. Labour control, as the hon. Gentleman said, was maintained only by the mayor's casting vote.
This situation, in our view meets neither the letter nor the spirit of paragraph 7 of the Circular of 1956. There was no majority of members to protect. Indeed, the Labour Party had a minority of elected members. That is why the dispensation to vote was refused in this case, although dispensation to speak was given. I accept that some confusion may have arisen because of the grant of dispensation to councillors who are council house tenants to vote on the sale of council houses. That was given a little earlier. However, as we explained in our letter to the council on 26th February, that dispensation was granted under the terms of an earlier circular, No. 75 of 1952, which was concerned only with the very narrow issue of the council's general policy on the sale of council houses. Here, it may be that the law is not so clear.
Paragraph 3 of that circular points out that there may be a pecuniary interest. It states:
Nevertheless, where a member who is a tenant of a house has no intention of buying or leasing his house, even if the local authority should decide to sell or lease houses, the Minister thinks the member might be held by the Courts not to have a pecuniary interest.
Paragraph 4 states:
Wherever it is decided that a member is disabled on account of a pecuniary interest, the Minister is prepared to entertain favourably any application for the removal of the disability (both as regards discussing and voting) so far as relates to the consideration of these general questions. Each application must however be related to a specific disability, transaction and occasion.
If the House thought that this was inconsistent my right hon. Friend would be prepared to consider the position. The effect would be to cut down still further the circumstances in which a councillor who had an indirect or direct pecuniary interest would be allowed to vote. As I told the hon. Member for Bristol, Central (Mr. Awbery), in reply to a Question on 20th March, I am sure that it would serve neither the interests nor the reputation of local government to tamper with the principle that members of local authorities should neither speak nor vote on matters in which they have a pecuniary interest, whether that interest arises from tenancy of a council house or in any other way.
Certainly, the interest of a councillor who lives in a council house in a matter which affects his rent can be a substantial one. I think that is especially so in a case like the Wolverhampton case, where the matter under consideration was the discontinuance of a rate subsidy and the introduction of a rent rebate scheme. Of course, members who live in council houses are not disfranchised, as the hon. Gentleman suggested. They may take a full part in the many housing questions in which they do not have a pecuniary interest.
Where such interests do arise, my right hon. Friend is already willing to consider applications to speak provided that the interest is not special to the individual member. But dispensations to vote will be given only in the exceptional circumstances which I have outlined tonight, and I do not believe that such circumstances existed in the case the hon. Gentleman has raised.

Mr. Baird: Is it not a fact that in one of the wards to which I referred, a ward of about 15,000 people, all the councillors are council tenants?

Mr. Rippon: That may be so, but it does not affect the general principle laid down in the 1933 Act, or in the circular thereunder.

12.10 a.m.

Mr. Michael Stewart: The Parliamentary Secretary made clear that the Government are not prepared to alter their decision in this case, but there is one consideration which I want him to take away with him and consider, since other cases of this kind might arise.
We understood that it had been the policy, as stated by the right hon. Gentleman who is now Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations, that these dispensations to vote would be granted if the result of refusing them would be that the will of the majority of the members of the council would be frustrated. That was the policy formulated by the then Minister of Housing. The hon. Gentleman has tonight put an extra qualification on that. He said that what is relevant in the argument is the wishes not of a majority of members of the council, but, as he put it, of the majority of the elected members. It is only by putting that special gloss on it that he can justify the decision in this case.
I am not sure that that is wise, for this reason. Parliament in its wisdom, in framing the laws about local government, has taken the view that the popu-

lar will, the will of the electorate as a whole, is best expressed not solely by electing councillors, but by making provision for the creation of aldermen by the councillors and for the election of a mayor, possibly someone outside the council. Whenever the merit and purpose of the aldermanic system have been argued, it has been suggested that in some way the existence of aldermen enables the popular will to be more accurately expressed over a period of time.
Opinions may differ as to whether aldermanship is a desirable institution or not, but it is at present part of the law of local government. The alderman is as much a member of the council as the councillor is. If the Minister now says that in interpreting the rule about dispensations he will pay attention only to elected members, to councillors, that is, we shall have a rather different principle applied. Before he applies it to any other cases, the Minister should consider what he is doing. He is really taking a view that derogates from the dignity and powers of the aldermen and the mayor who, whatever one may think about the institution of aldermanship, are legally entitled to be members of the council and work with the councillors in expressing the popular will of the electorate as a whole. There is a point here which the hon. Gentleman should consider carefully.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at fourteen minutes past Twelve o'clock.